The XVIII century, in Brazil, presents / displays great number of foreign artists who come to the country to execute sacred paintings in Religious Orders. It is interesting to note that the background of some biblical scenes, taken from European models, refers to a local landscape. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries offer rare testimony about Brazil, since the Portuguese are discreet about their colony and do not allow foreign travelers to visit. Even so, the bibliography is too broad to be synthesized in a few lines. In the eighteenth century, Brazil did not receive landscapers due to the Portuguese policy of total isolation of the colony, closed to foreign visitors, since the same Portuguese policy that promotes the demarcation, fortification and tracing of city plants, also acts to prevent entry Of foreigners seeking to veto them other ways of understanding Brazil's natural resources. Since the 17th century, designers have participated in the crews that travel the world. While the ports of Brazil remain closed, the circumnavigation expeditions, passing through the Brazilian coast, are only authorized to supply the ships, when records of the Brazilian towns are prepared from the sea. The situation of receiving foreign ships and their crew was not repeated frequently in colonial Santa Catarina, since since March 18, 1604, foreigners had been prohibited from entering Brazil, and since December 12, 1605, the order had been ordered to be placed 12 leagues from Coast, of the foreigners found. The shortage of testimonies of foreign travelers due to this prohibition, is not a phenomenon of Santa Catarina, but national. The literature of travelers is an important point in the collection of elements for the construction of History. As for Santa Catarina, the known bibliography is precious and, although small, it is capable of giving us the image that other peoples have made of us, not unlike the ideas we made ourselves, through considerations about the nature of our people, Exuberance of nature, the beauty of the bays, and other things more like the legislation of the kingdom that closed the trade with the outside, for example. Another aspect is that of Santa Catarina iconography in testimonies of foreign travelers; This is much rarer than the bibliography. Plastic iconography is even rarer. However, in terms of a historical production, the book Foreign Travelers Reports in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Berger (1984), brings together significant pictorial documentation given the scarcity of existing data. If compared to what has already occurred in Brazil, it is still incipient. The landscape of the island of Santa Catarina has undergone cumulative changes over time, in which the regional site where the small Póvoa do Desterro was built has a greater accumulation of events. The speed of this slow accumulation of changes, of course, was growing over time and the impact of the transformations was intense. Before the first European explorers made intensive contributions to the island of Santa Catarina at the beginning of the 16th century, the entire coast of Santa Catarina was already occupied. These were the Carijós Indians, belonging to the Tupi-Guarani nation. They lived in small villages and their food base was hunting and fishing and growing corn and cassava. They had a very diversified handicraft, such as nets, mats, baskets, pottery, weapons worked in polished stone and wood, canoe excavated in trunk of guarapuvu and the manufacture of alcoholic beverages and flour. The Carijós began to be captured incessantly by the bandeirantes for the slave work. Many fled into the interior of the continent, or died infected with diseases common to whites. Its saga lasted almost two centuries, culminating in the extermination of this tribe, but its cultural legacy remains alive in the identity of Santa Catarina. From the 16th century, the Island of Santa Catarina receives European visitors from various origins and origins. With the Treaty of Tordesilhas, it was donated to Pedro Lopes de Souza, in 1534, marking the beginning of the official occupation of the Santa Catarina coast. Portugal used it as a military strategic point, important for the Portuguese Crown. This military strategy motivated the implantation of a coastal defensive set, that is, the construction of fortresses, with the basic purpose of guaranteeing the legal possession and occupation of the territory. The process of occupation occurred gradually, passing through the hierarchy of human grouping of Póvoa, Vila and Parish. The island already had several names. For the Carijós Indians, it is called "Meimbipe", which means "mountain along the canal". With the population of the whites, it happened to have the name of "Island of the Ports". Then came the name of "Santa Catarina", which was given to the island in 1526, by Sebastião Caboto, possibly in honor of St. Catherine of Alexandria, celebrated by the Catholic Church on November 25. In 1662, the town gained the name of Our Lady of Desterro. Later, even if still sparsely inhabited, Desterro is elevated to the category of Villa, on March 23, 1726. When the Parish of Nossa Senhora do Desterro was created, this name begins to impose itself on that of Santa Catarina, until the village passes To be known simply as "Desterro". This happened to be the date, then, in which commemorates the official anniversary of the city. In 1730, being able to reach some religious and political organization, happens to be called Parish of Our Lady of Desterro. After the territory of Santa Catarina was dismembered from the Captaincy of São Paulo in 1738, a series of buildings and fortifications were built for the defense and settlement of the Island as a strategic point of the Portuguese Crown in the south of Brazil. Due to its privileged location, the Island, since its discovery, was also an obligatory point of passage for stopping and supplying vessels in transit along the Brazilian coast towards the Rio de la Plata region. With the process of fortification of the Island of Santa Catarina, it was contemplated the objective of population of the region to be defended, for which a great flow of immigrants occurred. It was the largest organized transfer movement of colonizers, and totaled 6,000 (6,000) Azoreans, between the period 1748-1756. For each family a small strip of land was destined, which resulted in a territorial planning typical of minifúndios, characterized by the subsistence culture. The implementation of the subsistence occurred with the fishing tradition of the Azoreans. The city is effective with the installation of the merchant capitalists, changing the characteristic until then political military, to integrate itself in an economic context more apt to expand, because with the commercial and maritime flourishing, some fortunes appear, that lend to the locality An intense pace of progress.
The Vila do Desterro, before Independence, in 1822, preserved the characteristics of a military occupation, since everything revolved around the government of the captaincy and the defense of Porto. There was a picture of poverty and dependence on distant military commands. The picture of stagnation changed after the arrival of Azorean and Madeiran immigrants in the first half of the XVIII century.