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The royal body
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| Portrait of D. Pedro I |
Brazil, ruled as an independent empire by descendants of the Portuguese Bragança monarchy between 1822 and 1889, already had a substantial pictorial tradition of embodying state power in images of the monarch, who would often be displayed among allegorical representations of the landscape or, as on this painting of Dom Pedro I, the insignia of the state (the book Pedro holds in his right hand is the Brazilian constitution).