Heitor da Silva Costa

Heitor da Silva Costa ( * July 25, 1873, † April 21, 1947 ) was a Brazilian civil engineer.

The atheist, later repented according to his great-granddaughter Maria Isabel Noronha to Christianity, went in 1924 as winners of the three years previously advertised on the initiative of the Catholic church competition for the construction of the monumental Christ the Redeemer statue Monumento Cristo Redentor on the Corvovado produced in Rio de Janeiro. The reason for the competition was the one hundred year anniversary of the independence of Brazil (1822 ).

The donor funded community work was from 1926 according to the design (1924 ) realized by da Silva Costa, who oversaw the construction of the eight-meter high pedestal and the framework for the 30 -meter-high figure of reinforced concrete. The plaster models, according to which the head and hands were copied in concrete, created by the French sculptor Paul Landowski (1875-1961) in his workshop in Boulogne- Billancourt, near Paris, the lining of the surface with a mosaic of easily moldable soapstone brought about the artist Carlos Oswald.

With the Cristo Redentor as Silva Costa created the largest Art Deco sculpture in the world. Is its weight, base included 1,145 tons. Its construction on the 710 -meter Corcovado as well as the panel represented enormous technical challenges and took five years to complete. The statue was da Conceição Aparecida inaugurated on October 12, 1931, the feast day of the patron saint of Brazil, Nossa Senhora, and is since 1973 under monument protection.