Américo draw them in his presence; Américo was able to reproduce them with great resemblance. Impressed, Brunet decided to hire Américo as the expedition's draftsman, so the little artist accompanied the Frenchman on a twenty-month trip across much of northeastern Brazil. In 1854, at the age of eleven, provided with several letters of recommendation, Américo was admitted to the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, in Rio de Janeiro, but could not join immediately. Before that he spent a season at Pedro II College studying Latin, French, Portuguese, arithmetic, drawing and music, standing out among his colleagues for his dedication and intelligence. His letters to his family reveal a student aware of his responsibilities, and he already had a desire, still uncertain, to dedicate himself to historical painting. Joining the Academy's Industrial Design course in 1856, his progress was equally brilliant, winning 15 medals in drawing, geometry and live model, being nicknamed papa-medalhas (medal earner) by the director of the institution, artist and scholar Manuel de Araújo Porto-Alegre, who would be an important influence on him, and his future father-in-law. Even before finishing the course, Américo obtained a pension from emperor Pedro II to go and study in Europe. Shortly before boarding, he developed an illness diagnosed as "lead colic", supposedly an intoxication by the paints he used, and which would accompany him throughout his life. After a painful and bumpy journey, he arrived in Paris in mid-May 1859, immediately scouring the city's museums, monuments, palaces and art galleries. At the same time, he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts, being a disciple of Ingres, Léon Cogniet, Hippolyte Flandrin and Sébastien-Melchior Cornu. According to his scholarship contract, he was required to strictly obey the discipline of the academy and regularly send works to Brazil to attest to his progress, including studies of living models and copies of works by renowned masters, including Guido Reni and Théodore Géricault. He won two first-class prizes, but was not interested in the great academic halls, which he considered unrepresentative. As he had other cultural interests besides art, during his stay in Paris Américo also studied at the Institute of Physics of Adolphe Ganot and in the Archeology Course of Charles Ernest Beulé. Américo graduated in Social Sciences at the Sorbonne, delving into architecture, theology, literature and philosophy, and attended classes by Victor Cousin, Claude Bernard and Michael Faraday at the Collège de France and the