Ouro Preto - São Francisco de Assis

On Largo de Coimbra, in the town center, is the beautiful Franciscan church of the Third Order, São Francisco de Assis. To the French art historian Germain Bazin it is "one of the most perfect works of art of the Western world, one of those works which, wholly created by one man, reproduce the original basic idea with complete fidelity". Aleijadinho was responsible not only for the design of the church, which is in the form of an irregular octagon, but also for the sculpture on the main doorway, the lavabo in the sacristy and all the wood-carving in the choir chapel and on the other six altars.

The trompe-l'oeil painting on the ceiling of the nave (1800-10) ranks as the masterpiece of Manuel da Costa Ataíde, the greatest painter of the colonial period. It depicts the Assumption in lively, tropically vivid colors; the Virgin herself is a mulatto.