stands out in the creative unity of the manifestations of genius. At no time in our evolution, painting had brushes that translated it with accents of such high inspiration of the noblest thought and superiority of expression". And diplomat José Manuel Cardoso de Oliveira stated that he was "a noble and sympathetic figure, a hero through the power of will, a genius through his talent, a master through his wisdom, a model through his virtues, an athlete through his work". Américo's adhered to the imperial government's program in the 1870s, and his initial success largely depended on it, but whether it was sincere is not known for certain. He always sought to reaffirm his intellectual independence, criticized the problems of the political and cultural system, apparently being a republican and democrat from an early age; Gonzaga Duque called him an opportunist. Américo was ambitious and knew how to take advantage of his context and to adapt to political and aesthetic changes, but for several authors his humanism and his interest in the main evolutionary lines of human culture were genuine, and not mere rhetoric. In any case, he was an active part of the cultural process that was underway in Brazil. In a speech he gave in 1870 in the presence of the emperor, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Aesthetics and Art History course at the Imperial Academy, Pedro Américo described the artists as "true prophets of civilization" engaged "in the battles of progress". As Rafael Cardoso analyzed: This discourse echoed in several other critical sources, which established a kind of equivalence between Brazilian military and artistic efforts, in short, endorsing Pedro Américo's statements about national glory as a "legitimate daughter" of the encounter between the conquests of the war and the intellectual conquests of peace, coming to be called a "hero" and "patriot", and compared to the combatants of the Paraguayan War. At that moment, the war was a factor of intense national union, possibly "the fundamental milestone in the crystallization of national identity during the Second Reign", as Cardoso argues, "in which the elites of all Brazilian regions freely chose to jointly participate in a nationality project, based on the liberal values of modern Europe", considering Brazil an "evolved" people – as their artistic successes proved and trumpeted – who had the right to militarily civilize the Paraguayan "barbarians". This progressive vision of art as