Eagle-Eye Leopoldina | Caixa Cultural
Acrylic on canvas, 2022

The intiution of the far-sighted, a trailblazing gaze, the disconcerting intelligence of one ofrged in a vast cultural and political repertoire beyond national borders. Joana Lira drew inspiration from these striking traits to create "Eagle-Leopoldina", a portrait in honor of Maria Leopoldina, the first Empress of Brazil, wife to D. Pedro I and a key player in the process that made Brazil’s independent from Portugal. The artist leaves by the wayside the melancholy image of a woman whose husband was compulsively unfaithful to address her perceptiveness, which was decisive for the historical moment that would change the country’s fate. The piece makes Leopoldina’s strategic vision the leading character, while D Pedro I, imperceptibly portrayed in his classic image as a horse rider, plays a supporting role. The picture is part of the "Women who changed 200 years” exhibition, a Caixa Cultural initiative to shed light on the importance of ten women who were contemporary of the independence period and whose stories remain obscured or very little known to this day. With Marina Bortoluzzi for a curator, the showing was on for four months in seven Brazilian cities simultaneously.