school textbooks and a variety of other media. Biography Early life His early years are obscure and the few sources provide conflicting information. Victor Meirelles de Lima was the son of Portuguese immigrant Antônio Meirelles de Lima and Brazilian Maria da Conceição dos Prazeres, merchants who lived with limited economic resources in the city of Nossa Senhora do Desterro (now Florianópolis). He had a brother, Virgílio. According to records, at the age of five he began to be educated in Latin, Portuguese and arithmetic, but he spent his free time drawing dolls and landscapes from his island of Santa Catarina and copying other people's images that he found in engravings and pamphlets. According to the testimony of José Arthur Boiteux: In 1843, when he was between 10 and 11 years old, Meirelles began to receive instruction from Father Joaquim Gomes d’Oliveira e Paiva, who taught him French and philosophy and deepened his knowledge of Latin. His precocious talent was noticed and encouraged by his family and local authorities, and in 1845 he began to take regular classes with a professor of geometric design, Argentine engineer Mariano Moreno, who was a doctor of law and theology, as well as a journalist, politician and former secretary of the first Government Board of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, playing, according to Teresinha Franz, "an important role in the construction of the Argentine identity". At the same time, Meirelles probably completed his general studies at the Jesuit College, which taught classes in Latin, French, philosophy, elementary history, geography, rhetoric, and geometry, and it is possible that he came into contact with traveling artists who documented nature and the local people. Some of his drawings were seen and appreciated by Jerônimo Coelho, counselor of the Empire of Brazil, who showed them to the then director of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, Félix-Émile Taunay. The director immediately accepted Meirelles, then only aged fourteen, as a student at the institution. Moving to Rio de Janeiro in 1847, Meirelles started to attend a drawing course, having the initial expenses financed by a group of patrons and being a student of Manuel Joaquim de Melo Corte Real, Joaquim Inácio da Costa Miranda and José Correia de Lima, who had studied with the classicist Debret. The following year he won a gold medal and a little later he returned to his hometown to visit his