She was done for the church for self-taught artists without formation technique, with inspiration in Spanish and Italian engravings with its strong colors and put into motion forms, without popular character or of national authenticity. In its majority, the production was anonymous, transcribing the molds European, imported of Italy, of erudite character. Serving to the interests of ostentation of the aristocracy and the church, the baroque art in Brazil, was adapted and molded to the emotional values of the society of the period. With the French Artistic Mission and the diffusion of the Neoclssico style, a new aesthetic position involves the artistic production in Brazil, dictating the norms adopted for the plastic artists of main cities of the country.
Saints were under the influence of the masters of the academy, who had spread out the new rules and techniques. The mission was an idea of the Conde of the Bark, minister of D. Joo VI, that it foresaw the project of the School of Sciences, Arts and Crafts in Rio De Janeiro. The process of organization of the mission was in charge of the ambassador Marquis of Marialva, next to the cut of Luis XV. Joaquin Lebreton, secretary of the Academy of Beautiful Arts of the Institute of France, was charged to select the reputation artists as Nicolas Antoine Taunay (painter of the institute), Auguste Marie Taunay (sculptor), Jean Baptiste Debret (painter) and others. The artists were influenced by the greco-roman and renascentista classicismo, base of the neoclssico movement. The workmanship had a rational conception, a intelectualizada position, overlapping all the emotional one and the sentimentalismo, limiting the exercise of the imagination, in the continuous process of disciplines and order in an attitude of repression through conventions and norms.