The painting represents the moment in which the heroine is freed from the fortress, almost naked, and her slave frees her, in an act of compassion and great respect, covering her shoulders with her own shawl, here depicted with the blue and white of the Ecuador Confederation. The gesture makes Dona Bárbara close her eyes and remember her farm at Pau Seco, her youth and the times spent with her family, the muddy river, the ploughed fields, the cattle (the children here at home loved the yellow cows) and the vast plantations of flowering 'pequi' trees. In the background, like "a blue line on the horizon", as Leonel de Alencar Rego said when he first caught sight of it, Dona Bárbara sees the Araripe Plateau, in deep blue, protecting her land and people. Completing the scene, a bunch of green and yellow 'pequi' fruits adorns her hair and reminds us of the colours of Brazil, which were born there with her.

Iracema no Ipu
Oscar Araripe
Bico de Pena / 2004

José de Alencar, the greatest romantic and indianist writer in Brasil, created Iracema - the virgin with honey lips, who we see here bathing on the the Ipu Fountain, revealing to our blossoming nationhood the beauty and dignity of the brazilian woman,who yesterday,as today,in reality as in fantasy , strolls by the beaches of Ceará, the most beautiful in the World.