Abstract
Sylvio de Vasconcellos is certainly the most well-known critic of the colonial architecture of Minas Gerais. Its production as architectural historian would be leased to the mid-twentieth century to the late 1970. However, all of its investigations extrapolated, in some respects, the previously undertaken research on colonial architecture. In fact, his work as a critic of architecture is filled with a modernist dogmatism derived from studies of Lucio Costa (the great reference to his theoretical discourse). Nevertheless, the criticisms of the author reach an unprecedented level of synthesis,which encouraged the alliance between the colonial culture of Minas Gerais, in its interface with the architecture and the cities of the mining region. And this effort is directed, among other things, to the massive discussion of the Baroque in Minas Gerais –that would be characterized as an isolated and special episode within the Brazilian colonial art. Thus, the author's main objective was to discover the architectural peculiarities of the gold cycle region, punctuating its relationships with the “mineiro” man, and with the culture of “mineiridade”.