The power of red

Once there was a color so valuable that emperors and conquistadors coveted it, and so did kings and cardinals. Artists went wild over it. Pirates ransacked ships for it. Poets from Donne to Dickinson sang its praises. Scientists vied with each other to probe its mysteries. Desperate men even risked their lives to obtain it. This highly prized commodity was the secret to the color of desire—a tiny dried insect that produced the perfect red.

How could a color be so valuable? In culture after culture, red commands the eye. We are drawn to its power, and to its passion, its sacrifice, its rage, its vitality. It’s not an accident that this coveted color is red: It turns out that we humans are unusually susceptible to scarlet hues. Studies show that the color quickens our pulse and breath, perhaps because we link it with birth, blood, fire, sex, and death.

The quest for a color

But for much of human existence, broad mastery of the color crimson was elusive. Only a few natural substances produce red dye. Henna, madder roots, brazilwood, archil lichens, and fermented stews of rancid olive oil, cow dung, and blood numbered among the sources over the centuries, but most of them fell short—faltering as dyes for textiles and setting into corals, russets, and persimmons instead of true scarlets. The worst of them faded fast into dull pinkish browns. True reds proved rare, and the evocative pigment became even more prized.

Thousands of years ago, however, Mesoamericans discovered that pinching an insect found on prickly pear cacti yielded a blood-red stain on fingers and fabric. The tiny creature—a parasitic scale insect known as cochineal—was transformed into a precious commodity. Breeders in Mexico’s southern highlands began cultivating cochineal, selecting for both quality and color over many generations.

The results were spectacular. The carminic acid in female cochineals could be used to create a dazzling spectrum of reds, from soft rose to gleaming scarlet to deepest burgundy. Though it took as many as 70,000 dried insects to make a pound of dye, they surpassed all other alternatives in potency and versatility.

Cochineal spread through ancient Mexico and Central America, where it was used for the quotidian and the sacred. Textiles, furs, feathers, baskets, pots, medicines, skin, teeth, and even houses bore the brilliant red dye. Scribes colored the history of their people with its crimson ink.

Cochineal comes to the world

When the Spanish conquistadors landed in Mexico, they were struck by the stunning scarlets of the New World. The exotic source of the dye became a sensation back in Europe, where it was deemed the “perfect red.” The Spanish would go on to ship tons of the dried insects back to the Old World and beyond. Their monopoly on the color’s source made it one of their most valuable exports from Mexico, second only to silver.

Europeans largely used cochineal on textiles, where it produced red fabrics of an unmatchable sheen and intensity. (It could also be used to make shades of peach, pink, purple, and black—but the reds were what made cochineal famous.) To see this magnificent red was to see power. Court gowns and royal robes were made with cochineal, as were the uniforms of British officers. The scarlet dye even found its way back across the ocean, into the “broad stripes” of the embattled banner over Fort McHenry that inspired the U.S. national anthem.

Painting and pitfalls with the new red

Cochineal also found a spot in the artist’s paint box. If you were a European artist on a tight budget, you could procure your cochineal from shreds of dyed cloth, but fresh-ground insects yielded much better results. Artists usually combined their cochineal with a binder, creating a pigment known as a lake.

It’s impossible to tell with the naked eye which painters used cochineal to make their reds. But recent advances in chemical analysis have confirmed its presence in numerous masterpieces. Among those works is Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride.

Between the muted browns and golds, the bride’s red gown draws the eye. A combination of vermilion base and cochineal glaze allowed Rembrandt to give the dress its great depth and luster. Other painters of the period also loved to use cochineal lakes to paint glowing red fabrics, such as the shimmering scarlet silks in Anthony van Dyck’s Charity and possibly in the Portrait of Agostino Pallavicini as well.

Eye-catching though these cochineal lakes were, they had one great drawback. Unlike cochineal dye on cloth, which usually holds fast to its color, cochineal pigments in paint tended to fade with exposure to light. This was especially true of watercolors. J. M W. Turner’s cochineal-reddened sunsets, for example, literally pale in comparison to what he originally set down.

Cochineal could be fugitive in oils too. A lake made with minimal cochineal, or cochineal of poor quality, faded in a matter of years. Even quality cochineal has dimmed over the centuries. The dowdy jacket in Thomas Gainsborough’s Dr. Ralph Schomberg and the blotchy pastel backdrop of Renoir’s Madame Léon Clapisson both are pale versions of the original.

Yet while Dr. Schomberg is consigned to his discolored suit for the foreseeable future, Madame Clapisson recently was given new life. A team at Northwestern University and the Art Institute of Chicago analyzed the cochineal that remained in the portrait and digitally recreated the painting in all its glory. Regard the original and the restoration, and you can see both the force of cochineal and its weakness.

When new artificial reds like alizarins made from coal tar became available in the late 19th century—ones more lasting and less expensive than those created by the naturally occurring insect—artists eagerly picked them up. By the late 20th century, artists had abandoned cochineal. Dyers, too, turned to cheaper alternatives. Even in its homeland, the insect nearly disappeared.

A red reborn

Today, in a surprising turn of history, the cochineal market is booming again—thanks to contemporary demand for safe food and cosmetic coloring. See names like carmine, carminic acid, crimson lake, Natural Red 4, or E120 on a label, and you may be looking at a modern manifestation of the color once fit for kings.

A few artists and dyers, too, have been tempted back by its revival—drawn to its intensity and sheen, its historical and cultural resonances. One is Elena Osterwalder, whose stunning installations employ both cochineal and the amatl bark-paper used by Mesoamericans before the Conquest.

In Oaxaca, once the epicenter of the cochineal trade, you can still find traditional weavers breathing new life into the ancient color.

Though the high era of cochineal may have ended, the power conveyed by its potent hue remains. Over centuries and continents, we humans have always been drawn in by red. After all, it’s in our blood.

This essay first appeared in the iris (CC BY 4.0).

Additional resources:

Read about the Star-Spangled Banner at the New York Times

Read about Renoir’s colors in Madame Clapisson at the New York Times

Read more about the uses of cochineal at Wired

Source: Amy Butler Greenfield, “The Bug That Had the World Seeing Red,” in Smarthistory, September 15, 2019, accessed August 24, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/cochineal/.

Americana and cabinets of curiosities

After Christopher Columbus landed on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in 1492 and the subsequent Spanish invasion and colonization of much of the Americas, material objects, flora, and fauna from these faraway lands were shipped back to Europe where many people perceived them as exotic items of wonder and fascination. Americana—objects sent from the Americas—were found in numerous cabinets of curiosities (also known as Wunderkammern). Cabinets of curiosities first appeared in sixteenth-century Europe as a way to display items perceived as exotic, curious, and wondrous. The strategy of collecting Americana and displaying it in cabinets of curiosities offered a way to engage with the Americas for those who might never undertake the voyage. In a sense, we might even say that this allowed Europeans to take possession of these distant lands.

The origin of cabinets of curiosities in the sixteenth century coincides with the discovery, by Europeans, that the world was much larger than they previously believed. It also coincides with the invasion and the colonization of the Americas and the millions of people who lived there. Technological and scientific advancements in mapping and navigation spurred interest in collecting items from around the globe, as well as the instruments needed to create maps and sail the seas.

Cabinets of curiosity created a microcosm of a world that could be studied, ordered, and understood, but they were not spaces in which just anyone could encounter and study such objects, these were personal spaces for the elite (and anyone they invited). They often combined human-made (artificialia), natural elements (naturalia), and scientific objects and instruments (scientifica), as we see in Ferrante Imperato’s 1599 illustration of a Wunderkammern.

Of the naturalia sent from the Americas, living animals—especially birds—were among the most popular. Turkeys, parrots, and macaws were among the birds that arrived in Europe. The armored appearance of armadillos were also a continuous source of wonder; and their shell retained its shape, even if they died on the transatlantic voyage. Apparently, some were even gilded and displayed on pillars in Europe.

Among the human-made items from the Americas found in Renaissance curiosity cabinets are Olmec masks, Mesoamerican codices (such as the Codex Vaticanus A), New Spanish featherworks, Brazilian hammocks, Taíno objects, and more. Among the most exceptional objects to first enter European Wunderkammern were those sent by Hernán Cortés in 1519, as gifts to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Turquoise masks, golden figurines, featherworks, and more were met with excitement and amazement by people in Toledo, Valladolid, and eventually Brussels. Albrecht Dürer even remarked that “In all my life I have seen nothing that made my heart rejoice so much as these things. Here I have found wonderful, costly things and I have marveled at the subtle ingenuity of people in strange lands.”[1]

The Medici Popes

Among the most avid collectors of Americana were members of the powerful Florentine Medici family. Medici popes Leo X (Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici, who reigned as Pope from 1513–21) and Clement VII (Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici, who reigned from 1523–34) collected Americana—and in fact were some of the earliest to do so. They never traveled across the Atlantic, yet their desire to understand these lands increased, especially with ongoing evangelization attempts. Leo X commissioned frescoes filled with American flora and fauna. For instance, he commissioned the artist Giovanni di Udine to paint maize (also known as corn and first domesticated by Indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago) in festoons in the Loggias (designed by Raphael) in the Vatican palace.

Udine had, though, painted the first known depictions of maize earlier, between 1515–17, in the festoons around frescoes by Raphael in the Loggia of Psyche within the Villa Farnesina in Rome, which belonged to the wealthy Sienese banker Agostino Chigi. Pope Clement VII was likewise among the earliest patrons to commission artworks that depicted subjects related to this foreign world which he had never seen with his own eyes. In his Villa Madama (Sala di Giulio Romano, c. 1520) in Rome, he had Udine paint a naturalistic turkey along with other birds like peacocks.

Popes Leo X and Clement VII also actively acquired Americana as well. In 1514, the Portuguese king, Manuel I, sent Leo X a gift of flora and fauna from the Americas and India. It is likely that part of this gift included plants like maize and beans from the Americas, as well as the special gift of an elephant, called Hanno, from India, of whom Leo was extremely fond.

The Ñudzavui (Mixtec) Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus I, one of the few surviving pre-conquest Mesoamerican screenfold codices, was owned by Clement VII. The King of Portugal reportedly sent it to Clement VII, along with other gifts from the Americas, sometime before 1523. A decade later, the Medici pope received another gift of objects from the Spanish Dominican friar, Domingo de Betanzos, who had traveled to New Spain to aid in evangelizing the Indigenous populations. The Dominican friar apparently gifted the pope featherworks, Ñudzavui turquoise masks, and codices.

The First Grand Duke: Cosimo I de’ Medici

Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici (who reigned from 1537–1574) and his wife, Duchess Eleanora di Toledo, like their Medici family members, never traveled to the Americas. But they too continued to acquire plants, animals, and other objects from these far-away lands. They also commissioned artworks that made visual reference to the Americas, possibly as a way to participate in a vicarious conquest of these foreign peoples and places. Cosimo was partly able to collect Americana because of his marriage to Eleanora, a noblewoman of the Spanish court. Their marriage in 1539 helped to cement a Medici alliance with Spain, which would aid Cosimo in his collecting practices. The two grew maize, and apparently even started to cultivate tomatoes and medicinal plants (also introduced from the Americas). Cosimo had live birds, including turkeys, at Medici estates. Beyond their interest in living flora and fauna, the Medici Duke and Duchess also had also obtained a number of objects from the Americas, including mosaic masks, objects made of jade, and feather cloaks.

How items such as these were listed in Medici inventories reveals the challenges that Europeans faced when classifying Amerindian objects. In a 1553 inventory, Aztec masks were listed under ‘jewelry’ (goia), but not long thereafter in another inventory they were listed as “theatrical masks” (maschera) in an attempt to compare them with recognizable European forms with clear functions. At this time there was also an interest in Greco-Roman theatrical masks, so perhaps the Aztec masks were eventually believed to function in a similar capacity. This reframing of Mesoamerican masks—from jewelry to masks—could also relate to broader ways in which Europeans were trying to understand and reconcile American objects, many of which were unfamiliar to them. [2]

Grand Dukes Francesco I (1574 to 87) and Ferdinando I (1587 to 1609)

Cosimo and Eleanora’s eldest son, Francesco, was similarly drawn to the naturalia and artificialia of the Americas, sharing his father’s keen interest in birds and plants. At one point, he commissioned Jacopo Ligozzi to create naturalistic drawings of local and exotic plants and animals, some of which came from the Americas. Among the most remarkable are his depictions of a pineapple, a macaw, and the American century plant (Agave americana), all drawn circa 1570.

Ligozzi had live models on which to base his clearly articulated images, and his almost microscopic details were praised. Francesco’s interest in the American naturalia extended to his experiments as well. In the Casino di San Marco in Florence which had workshops, including the Medici porcelain factory, Francesco conducted experiments and studied his collection of plants and animals. Like his father, he continued to grow plants, some of them from the Americas, in a nearby botanical garden. He would use some in his alchemical experiments, creating medicines and other distillations. Francesco often gifted objects and naturalia from the Americas to other high-ranking individuals who were similarly fascinated with items from distant lands. One sumptuous gift was given to Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria in 1572, and it included featherworks, gold and silver figurines, parrots, food items, and more.

Francesco’s younger brother, Ferdinando, also had a desire to collect Americana. As a cardinal in Rome, he acquired numerous objects, such as multiple featherworks, one of which was a bishop’s mitre. He also came into ownership of the Florentine Codex, an encyclopedia produced between 1575 and 1577 under the direction of the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún along with Indigenous collaborators. This twelve volume text included discussion of cochineal, which produced a highly coveted red dye, along with other types of resources from the Americas. One can imagine Ferdinando’s interest in possibly learning from the Florentine Codex how to manufacture cochineal.

When Francesco died in 1587, and Ferdinando became Grand Duke of Florence, he moved from Rome to Florence with his collection. Ligozzi, who had remained in the employ of the Medici court even after Francesco’s death, would then paint, at the request of Ferdinando, one of his most well-known and final botanical images: the Passiflora coerulea, or the passion flower (or Granadilla or maracot originally). Previously unknown to Europeans, it had only recently become known, and sent across the Atlantic to Europe. The plant sparked immense curiosity because of the manner in which it visually evoked the crown of thorns, and so became a powerful Christian symbol.

Knowing the unknown

Medici fascination with Americana in the sixteenth century was certainly not unique. Across Europe, many powerful individuals sought to acquire objects taken from the Americas, as a way to know the unknown, to exert some control over the colonial processes underway, and to possess exotic and rare things. The Medici popes and three grand dukes provide a more focused example of the ways in which Americana intersected with European interests in conquest and colonization, science and alchemy, and collecting and visual culture in the sixteenth century.

Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to Lydia Parker.

Notes:

[1] Adriana Turpin, “The New World collections of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici and their role in the creation of a Kunst- and Wunderkammer in the Palazzo Vecchio,” Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. R.J.W. Evans and Alexander Marr (London: Ashgate, 2006), p. 64.
[2] Isabel Yaya, “Wonders of America: The Curiosity Cabinet as a Site of Representation and Knowledge,” Journal of the History of Collections (2008), pp. 1–16.; Turpin, p. 73.

Additional resources

The Medici Collections of the Museo Galileo, on Google Arts and Culture

Collecting for the Kunstkammer on The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Christian F. Feest, “The Collecting of American Indian Artifacts in Europe, 1493–1750,” in America in European Consciousness, 1493–1750, ed. Karen Ordahl Kupperman (University of North Carolina Press, 1995), pp. 324–60.

J. Janick and G. Caneva, “The First Images of Maize in Europe,” Maydica 50 (2005), pp. 71–80.

Source: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, “The Medici collect the Americas,” in Smarthistory, June 18, 2019, accessed July 13, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/medici-americas/.

In the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the Roman Catholic Church was an important—if not the most important—art patron, commissioning churches, altarpieces, paintings, and sculptures, a result of the system of Royal Patronage (Patronato Real), which granted the Spanish Crown unprecedented privileges in Church affairs in exchange for Spain’s funding of missionary ventures abroad (this was a unique system in Europe). The colonization of New Spain therefore worked in favor of both the Crown’s imperialist and material aspirations, and the Church’s desire to evangelize local indigenous populations.

These goals were accomplished largely through the work of missionaries and mission churches, as well as through an active artistic program that initiated the construction of new buildings and art schools that trained Amerindians in the art of painting, sculpture, and even cartography. Royal Patronage also meant that colonial authorities exercised considerable power over the Church in New Spain, controlling church appointments, revenues, and architectural programs.

The importance of mission churches

The Christianization of the Americas began in 1537, following the papal bullSublimis Deus, through which Pope Paul III declared that the native populations were in fact human beings with souls and the intellectual potential to understand the tenets of Christianity, and thus were not subject to enslavement (prior to this moment they had been considered savage and even demonic by the Church).

This religious fervor grew even more severe in 1545, when the Council of Trent convened in response to the rising threat of Protestantism, a new form of Christianity that emerged in the sixteenth century as a reformed version of Roman Catholicism. In response to the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent launched a global campaign—known as the Counter-Reformation—that reaffirmed Roman Catholic beliefs and teachings. One of the results of this effort was that religious institutions like churches, monasteries, and convents were expected to play an active role in expanding their congregations and expounding the values of Roman Catholics through the proliferation of religious spaces.

From 1523 to 1580, many religious orders arrived in New Spain, among them the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, and Jesuits. Determined to convert the native people and expand the congregation, friars built mission churches, also called conventos, in indigenous communities, such as the Franciscan Church of San Miguel in Huejotzingo (above) and the Augustinian Church of San Salvador in Malinalco (below).

These mission churches, which followed a similar architectural plan but varied in terms of decoration, are among the earliest examples of colonial architecture—a testimony to the importance given to missionary work within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. A religious militia of sorts, the friars not only empowered the Church, but also facilitated the colonization of New Spain without the use of a standing army.

Colonial maps like the Map of Oaxtepec reiterate the importance of mission churches. Here, the convento, identified by the large patio (courtyard), appears as the nucleus of the community. Near the edges of the map, and connected through a network of roads, the artist depicts seven additional churches. Their identical appearance suggests that they are meant as symbols for “church,” rather than visualizations of how these spaces actually looked. [1] This repetition reinforces the firm presence and power of the Roman Catholic Church in New Spain.

The Franciscan Mission in New Spain

Franciscans were among the earliest monks to arrive in New Spain, including the three prominent Flemish Franciscans Peeter van der Moere of Ghent (a.k.a. Pedro de Gante), Jehan der Auwera (a.k.a. Juan de Aora), and Johan Dekkers or de Toict (a.k.a. Juan de Tecto). For monks, the first order of business was to begin construction on mission churches that functioned as “theaters of conversion,” as art historian Samuel Y. Edgerton refers to them, since they served as sites of theatrical performances and processions that merged both pre-Hispanic and Christian rituals. [2] In preparation for this process of conversion, monks—particularly Franciscans—would learn the languages and cultures of the local populations, allowing them to integrate indigenous names, iconography, and customs into the Christian practices of New Spain. The most powerful of didactic tools, however, were visual aids that helped overcome the challenges of illiteracy and language barriers.

The exterior of the Franciscan mission Church of San Miguel in Huejotzingo serves as an exemplar of the importance of designing a proper space of conversion. Featuring high, thick walls topped by crenellations, the church appears—at least from the exterior—as a type of fortress. This design might have suggested the permanence of these Christian missions in New Spain. Monks came and went, but the church and its congregation remained. The design might have also alluded to the belief that Christian monks were the soldiers of God—though such associations might have been lost on the indigenous population.

Unique characteristics

The convento was, in and of itself, a foreign concept. Therefore, the fact that these churches were built by indigenous masons and often times in an indigenous style helped to further legitimize the idea of the convento as part of their local community. A unique characteristic of Mexican conventos was the creation of open spaces, like the capilla india, used to address large native crowds, and the smaller posa chapels in the corners of the atrium (typically found in Franciscan churches), used for ritual processions involving portable altars. While the creation of these outdoor spaces solved the problem of accommodating the growing population of converted Christians, it resonated among the natives who, during the pre-Columbian period, performed dances and rituals in walled outdoor spaces, recalling the open-air layout of the Templo Mayor in the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan.

As was typical of Franciscan mission churches, the Church of San Miguel includes four posa chapels, each located in a corner of the perfectly squared patio. Above the archway, relief sculptures of angels appear inside a knotted cord, a reference to the habits of the Franciscan monks, who each tied a cord around their waist. Above these angels, four shields contain the emblems of the Franciscan order. The distinctive pyramidal roof is another common trait of posa chapels.

Sculpture and painting in conventos

Found in conventos of different religious orders, atrial crosses were sculpted stone crosses displayed in courtyards, such as the one found at the Convento of San Agustín de Acolman. They usually represented the instruments of Christ’s passion in relief, thus avoiding the need to represent the actual Crucifixion. By avoiding a realistic depiction of Christ’s sacrifice, the early missionaries were intentionally de-emphasizing the existing ideas about human sacrifice prevalent in Mesoamerican cultures.

At the Convento of San Agustín de Acolman, one can also find a series of frescopaintings that detail the Passion of Christ through a narrative sequence. Indigenous artists, who were most likely looking at religious prints imported from Europe, created these frescoes, with their sparse composition and limited color palette. Much like the atrial cross, these murals functioned as didactic tools that gave visual clarity to an otherwise complex narrative, and borrowed from both Christian and native practices.

Carefully combining local and foreign practices, these mission churches created a unique colonial iconography and architecture that is indebted as much to Amerindians as it is to Europeans. While conventos served to first congregate and convert locals during the early decades of colonization, they largely fell out of favor by the end of the sixteenth century. Yet despite their demise, Catholicism continued to flourish in New Spain, and even after independence.

See also:

“Surveying Political Force,” essay on politics and the Church in New Spain from Vistas

The original Papal Bull of 1537

Official pages for the Ex Convento of San Agustin de Acolman and Ex Convento de San Miguel, Huejotzingo (in Spanish) from INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia)

Source:  Dr. Maya Jiménez, “Mission churches as theaters of conversion in New Spain,” in Smarthistory, October 9, 2018, accessed July 13, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/missions-new-spain/.

Guardian angels

Brandishing a fiery sword, standing in a balletic pose, and stretching almost top to bottom in a painting, an angel protects a young boy. His pink and green clothes flutter behind him and his delicately painted wings compliment his golden curls. The boy wears expensive clothing—indicating he is elite, or possibly even royalty—and stands on a blue orb. He gestures toward the angel, as if to acknowledge his divine protector, and in turn the angel makes the same gesture toward the light of God in the upper right. The angel protects the child from the two figures in the darkened lower left corner: a woman with an exposed breast and wearing jewelry (perhaps an allegory of Lust or Temptation), and Satan holding a hook. They look toward the boy, as if to tempt him or catch him in sin. They are the dark to juxtapose the light streaming from the opposite, diagonal corner. In this painting, by the artist Luis Juárez in New Spain, the guardian angel protects the noble child from evil.

The theme of protection, or more accurately, protection of Christians and the Christian faith, was common in the Spanish viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru (and eventually the viceroyalties of New Granada and Río de la Plata). Painted around 1615, the subject of Juárez’s painting can be understood in relation to several important historical events. To begin, about a hundred years earlier (as the invasion and colonization of the Americas was still in its early phase in the early sixteenth century) the Catholic Church split after the Protestant Reformation erupted in northern Europe. For much of the next century, the threat of Protestantism loomed large, which caused reforms in the Catholic Church that were decided at the Council of Trent which convened between 1545–63. The powerful Ottoman Empire continued to be cause for concern among many European Christians as well; the Ottomans represented a powerful Muslim empire and had already defeated the Byzantine Empire (among others). Even with the perceived threats to Catholicism, the Catholic Church remained tremendously powerful and exerted its influence across the globe. In Europe, images of angels as protectors became more common during the Counter Reformation (the Catholic Church’s response to the Protestant Reformation) as did other depictions of saints who defended the Christian faith from supposed heretics, infidels, and invaders.

Ideas about heretics and infidels, as well as the subjects of heavenly protectors, arrived in the Americas with Spanish colonization. The subject of heavenly protectors not only communicated the same messages, but also conveyed new meanings in these newly colonized lands. The defense of the Church and the protection of Christians had a particular urgency as mass forced conversions occurred, as millions of Indigenous people and entire continents came increasingly under the control of Euro-Christian forces. The desire to convert Indigenous peoples to Christianity seemed especially urgent because many Christians believed the Second Coming of Christ and Judgment Day would occur soon—and when that happened, any unbaptized souls would be condemned to suffer for eternity.

St. Michael the Archangel

Besides images showing guardian angels, another popular subject was St. Michael the Archangel. Paintings, prints, and sculptures of St. Michael as a defender of the faith were common across the Spanish Americas. In many instances, Michael is shown in Roman military clothing standing atop Satan, who falls face forward toward the ground. In another painting by Juárez, Saint Michael the Archangel, Michael poses triumphantly on Satan’s back, holding a spear (topped by a banner) angled towards the Devil. The painting calls to mind the Book of Revelation (chapter 12), in which Michael defends the Woman of the Apocalypse (understood by Christians to be the Virgin Mary). Rays of divine light illuminate Michael from above, giving the impression of light battling darkness yet again. Here, Michael is a symbol of the Church Militant (the idea of the church battling against heresy and sin). Michael was understood as protecting the expansionist agenda of the church, which amounted to supporting  European colonialism and the conversion of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. This painting was possibly paired with the one of the Guardian Angel above.

Armed angels

The idea of militaristic angels spawned new art forms in the Spanish Americas. In the viceroyalty of Peru (in what is today Bolivia), a genre of painting now called ángeles arabuceros (or harquebus-holding angels — a harquebus is a type of gun) developed. In one by the Master of Calamarca, we see an angel wearing elaborate clothes and accoutrements—enormous puffy sleeves, fanciful and delicate lace, golden embroidery, and a hat topped with feathers. Its body is almost lost underneath all the fanciful clothes, but its graceful legs stand firmly on the ground. The angel holds a harquebus aiming it toward the upper right corner. One of the messages of the painting is that the angel defends Christians, supported by the inscription “Asiel Timor Dei” (Asiel Fear of God).

Saint James (Santiago)

Saint James (Santiago in Spanish), the patron saint of Spain, was another defender of the faith who was popular in the Spanish Americas. He was often displayed on horseback, brandishing a sword. In one polychrome (painted) and gilded wooden sculpture from central New Spain, Santiago sits on a horse. Realistic elements like stirrups, hair, and leather make the sculpture seem more realistic. This type of sculpture is called a paso, and it was meant to be carried or even wheeled during a religious procession. For instance, it would have been processed on Saint James’s feast day in July. Underneath the horse’s feet is an empty box, but originally would have included figures painted on it (either Muslims or Indigenous peoples) to give the illusion that the horse was trampling them (perceived as enemies, heretics, and pagans).

Santiago’s popularity in Spain dates back to the 8th century when he miraculously came to the aid of Christians fighting Muslims on the Iberian Peninsula (today, Spain and Portugal). His bodily remains were also popular relics in northwestern Spain in Compostela and many medieval pilgrims made journeys to venerate them. In Spain, he was often represented as Santiago Matamoros, or Saint James the “Moorslayer”—literally as someone who kills Muslims.

This trope as defender of Christians also came to the Americas, where he was sometimes understood and shown as Santiago Mataindios, “Saints James the slayer of indios.” He is also credited with fighting for the Spanish conquistadors against Indigenous peoples. In one well-known apparition, Santiago helped Spanish forces during a battle in Cuzco in 1536 when he appeared on a white horse with a sword to defend them against the Inka. As a result, he soon appeared through the viceroyalties as a defender of Christians and as a sign of triumph. Native Andean author-artist Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala illustrated the event in his letter to the King of Spain, showing Santiago on horseback and trampling an Inka warrior. Interestingly, some Indigenous peoples venerated Santiago, which may seem contradictory. For some Indigenous Andeans, he came to be associated with Ilapa (a deity of lightning and thunder), demonstrating the complex ways in which Catholicism was transformed, nuanced, or altered after the Spanish Conquests.

Saint Christopher

Saint Christopher is another protective saint who was popular in the Spanish Americas. He is often shown carrying the Christ Child to demonstrate his care of Christians, such as we see in another Novohispanic (from New Spain) polychrome and gilded wooden sculpture. The saint has well-developed musculature, and he dwarfs the young child who sits upon his shoulders. Christopher was known as the cristo ferens, or Christ bearer. He had devoted himself to the teachings of Jesus, and in doing so began to ferry people across the river on his shoulders. One day, he carried a child across the river, but with each step the Child grew heavier and the ferrying grew more challenging. Once on the other side of the river, the Child identified himself as Jesus and told Christopher he had just carried the weight of the world on his shoulder (this is also why Christopher is the patron saint of travelers).

Christopher was a popular saint in the Americas because he also symbolized the carrying of Christianity across the Atlantic. In a painting from the first half of the 16th century, Christopher Columbus kneels before the Virgin Mary and Christ Child in Hispaniola. Christopher (with Christ upon his shoulder) places his hand on the back of Christopher Columbus to demonstrate his divine protection and to indicate that Columbus was himself another Christ bearer—his voyages initiated the waves of European invasion and colonization that would occur in the Americas after 1492.

None of these protector saints were unique to the Spanish Americas, but they did acquire new meanings when they traveled from Europe across the Atlantic Ocean. Some of them, such as Saint Michael, would even appear miraculously on American soil (such as at San Miguel del Milagro in Mexico), prompting pilgrimages to sites of these saints’ miraculous apparitions. With these apparitions new local manifestations of these protective saints developed, attesting yet again to the ways in which Catholicism transformed and developed on American soil.

Additional resources:

Learn more about engraved sources for paintings in colonial Spanish American art on Project on the Engraved Sources of Spanish Colonial Art

Learn more about the legacy of the Reconquest in Latin America and Columbus’ Landing and Erasing Native Resistance from Unsettling Journeys 

The Inquisition in Colonial Latin America – Autos-de-fé paintings from Unsettling Journeys

Painting a New World, exh. cat., ed. Donna Pierce, Denver Art Museum (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004) (available online)

Source: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, “Defensive saints and angels in the Spanish Americas,” in Smarthistory, February 22, 2021, accessed July 23, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/defensive-saints-angels-spanish-americas/.

Virgin of Guadalupe, late 17th century, 190 cm high, oil paint, gilding, and mother of pearl on panel (Franz Mayer Museum, Mexico City)

URL: https://youtu.be/imkOrmHtSJ0

Loving mother. Devoted wife. Ideal woman. Queen of Heaven.

Who could ever be this perfect? For Christians, the Virgin Mary carries all these titles, and she is often celebrated in art as a mother, wife, and queen. With Spanish colonization of the Americas, devotion to the Virgin Mary crossed the Atlantic.

The conquistador Hernán Cortés even carried a small statue of the Madonna with him as he searched for gold and encountered the Indigenous peoples of Mexico. After the defeat of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521 and the establishment of the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain (Spanish rule in Mexico, Central America, and part of the U.S., 1521–1821), the Virgin Mary became one of the most popular themes for artists. One Marian cult image eventually became more popular than any other however: the Virgin of Guadalupe, also known as La Guadalupana. Her image is found everywhere throughout Mexico today, gracing churches, chapels, homes, restaurants, vehicles, and even bicycles.

Imagery from the Book of Revelation and the Song of Songs

Many people consider the original image of Guadalupe to be an acheiropoieta, or a work not made by human hands, and so divinely created. Some consider the image the product of an Indigenous artist named Marcos Cipac (de Aquino), working in the 1550s. In the original image, still enshrined in the basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City today, Guadalupe averts her gaze and clasps her hands together in piety. She stands on a crescent moon, and is partially supported by a seraph (holy winged-being) below. She wears Mary’s traditional colors, including a brilliant blue cloak over her dress. Embroidered roses decorate her rose-colored dress. Golden stars adorn her cloak and a mandorla of light surrounds her.

The image of Guadalupe relates to Immaculate Conception imagery, which drew aspects of its symbolism from the Book of Revelation and the Song of Songs. For instance, the Book of Revelation describes the Woman of the Apocalypse as “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.” In the Guadalupe image, twelve golden rays frame her face and head, a direct reference to the crown of stars.

Ashen skin

Guadalupe’s ashen skin is the subject of some discussion. It is possible that she represents an Indigenous Madonna. However, the Virgin of Guadalupe in Extremadura, Spain, after whom Mexico’s Guadalupe is named, is a black-skinned Madonna—a direct reference to Mary’s beauty based on a passage from the Song of Songs: “I am black but beautiful.” Black Madonnas were popular long before Guadalupe’s appearance in Mexico, and so it is possible that her ashen skin situates her within this pre-existing tradition.

Seeing her today

Today, millions travel annually to her basilica to glimpse the original image, which visitors see while zooming beneath it on a conveyor belt. The original shrine devoted to Guadalupe, on a hill above the basilica, marks the site of her initial miraculous appearance.

Her miraculous revelation to Juan Diego

The story associated with her miraculous revelation varies depending on the author, but the general story goes something like this: In December 1531, a converted Nahua man named Juan Diego was on his way to mass. As he walked on the hill of Tepeyac(ac), formerly the site of a shrine to the Aztec mother goddess Tonantzin, Guadalupe appeared to him as an apparition, calling him by name in Nahuatl, the language of the Nahua. According to one textual account written in Nahuatl, Juan Diego described her as dark-skinned, with “Garments as brilliant as the sun.” She requested that Juan Diego ask the bishop, Juan de Zumárraga, to construct a shrine in her honor on the hill. After recounting the story, the bishop did not believe Juan Diego and requested proof of this miraculous appearance. After speaking again with Guadalupe on two other occasions, she informed Juan Diego to gather Castilian roses—growing on the hillside out of season—inside his tilma, or native cloak made of maguey fibers, and bring them to the bishop. When Juan Diego opened his tilma before Bishop Zumárraga the roses spilled out and a miraculous imprint of Guadalupe appeared on it. Immediately, Bishop Zumárraga began construction of a shrine on the hill.

Devotion to Guadalupe

Initially, devotion to Guadalupe was primarily local. Yet veneration of Guadalupe increased, especially because people attributed her with miraculously interceding on their behalf during calamitous events. For instance, she was thought to assist in ending a flood in Mexico City in 1629 and an epidemic that ravaged the population of the capital between 1736–37. After the 1737 epidemic subsided, Mexico City declared her patron of the city. In 1746, Guadalupe was even declared the co-patroness of New Spain along with St. Joseph, and Pope Benedict XIV granted a feast day and mass in her honor for December 12 in the year 1754.

She was so revered that people of different social and ethnic backgrounds paid her reverence. In particular, criollos (or creoles, pure-blooded Spaniards born in the Americas) promoted her devotional cult. They wrote some of the earliest texts recounting her miraculous appearance on Novohispanic soil, a fact they advertised as proof that God blessed the Americas and approved of a new nation. To support this notion, artists often included the motto “Non fecit taliter omni nationi” (Psalm 147:20—He has not dealt thus with any other nation) into their artworks.

True copies

Images depicting Guadalupe proliferated in the seventeenth century as devotion to her increased. Prints, paintings, and enconchados (oil painting and shell-inlay) replicate the original tilma image. Sometimes artists included inscriptions that mention the representation is a true copy of the tilma image.

For example, Manuel de Arellano writes “After the original” (Tocada el original) on his 1691 version of Guadalupe. This statement suggests that artists based their work on the original image and some of the power of the original image transferred to the replication. Besides replicating the tilma image, artists often included the narrative of the miracle in the four corners of the composition, as Arellano’s and Isidro Escamilla’s version from 1824 demonstrate. Frequently flowers frame the mandorla surrounding Guadalupe, a direct reference to the Castilian roses in Juan Diego’s tilma.

To prove further that New Spain was equal to Europe, some of the most famous artists of the eighteenth century, such as Miguel Cabrera and Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz, were invited by the clergymen of the Basilica of Guadalupe to inspect the image on April 30, 1751 to authenticate that the image was indeed miraculous. In 1756, Cabrera published the result of this inspection as Maravilla Americana (American Marvel) in which he declared that the tilma image was indeed an acheiropoieta.

Guadalupe and national identity

Other visual motifs further communicate the political connotations with which Guadalupe increasingly became linked. For instance, some artists placed an eagle perched on a cactus below Guadalupe (such as in the enconchado above), which had long functioned as a sign for the establishment of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan that became Mexico City after the Conquest. Guadalupe’s connection to creole identity and the creole desire for Mexican independence was solidified after father Miguel Hidalgo raised a liturgical banner of Guadalupe during his cry for independence in 1810.

“the making, the modeling of our first mother-father, with yellow corn, white corn alone for the flesh, food alone for the human legs and arms…” The Popol Vuh

So goes the Quiché Maya creation story recorded in the Popol Vuh. The myth recounts that the creator gods made four attempts at constructing humanity: first from animal parts, then mud, followed by wood, and finally, corn. With corn they were ultimately successful, indicating corn’s importance not only as sustenance, but also as symbolically charged with life force.

Corn pith sculptures,pasta de caña

Corn was a staple crop of Mesoamerica, and was widely laden with sacred symbolism associated with creation. Indigenous artists not only sculpted images of the corn god, but also modeled objects out of corn using stalk fibers mixed with orchid glue into a paste. [1] Sadly, pre-hispanic corn sculptures using this method do not survive, but this same Indigenous technology (often likened to papier-mâché), was used extensively for Christian religious sculpture in the early colonial period (primarily the 16th century). In fact, the cristos de caña are emblematic of emerging Indigenous Christianity.

Franciscan missionary Gerónimo de Mendieta wrote of the corn pith sculptures, called pasta de caña, in his chronicle Historia Ecclesiástica Indiana: “They also carry crucifixes made from reeds that are the size of a large man but weigh as little as a child.” [2] Similar (but much heavier), sculptures made of wood were common in the Spanish world. They were made with a polychroming encarnación technique known for making saints and holy figures appear remarkably life-like. However, the pasta de caña technology allowed for much lighter sculptures—making them far more appealing as processional objects.

Take, for example, the 16th-century crucifix of the Señor de la Sacristía, housed in the Cathedral of Morelia, Michoacán. Made of pasta de caña, the figure features copious blood flowing from Christ’s wounds, thereby emphasizing his human suffering. The sculpture is venerated in July, when historically it was carried in procession. This time of year corresponds with the pre-hispanic P’uhrépecha month of Caheri Cascuaro, or “Great feast of Lords.” This celebration of lordship in the Indigenous context likely paralleled the veneration of Christ as lord in the new, Christianized, context. Additionally, this month was associated with planting and immature corn stalks, furthering the associations between the local cristo de caña and Indigenous concepts surrounding the sacrality of corn. [3]

Religious processions like the ones held in Michoacán, were most famously enacted during Semana Santa (Holy Week). Still practiced today in many towns and cities in Latin America, typically these public processions would bring together people from all walks of life to witness the spectacle of those marching in the parade in fine clothing and bearing various sacred and liturgical objects. Often organized by confraternity members, the processions were multiethnic, public declarations of piety and social standing. It was for this context specifically that the pasta de caña sculptures, oftentimes images of Jesus Christ (cristos de caña), were made.

Pre-hispanic codices inside

The cristos de caña were modeled with a reed framework upon which the corn pith mixed with gum was modeled into a naturalistic body. Paper was also sometimes inserted into the matrix of the objects, and recent x-ray studies have revealed the placement of pre-hispanic codices (books) within the inner layers. [4]

As corn was a sacred Indigenous substance and the ancient books were prestige items, scholars have speculated that the sacred nature and worth of the materials that made up the statues may have added to their meaning in the eyes of Indigenous converts by linking them to the pre-hispanic past.

The development of these processional sculptures has been credited to the bishop of Michoacán, Don Vasco de Quiroga. Known as a “protector of Indians,” the bishop advocated against Indigenous enslavement, insisting that Natives be organized into administrative congregations for the purposes of Hispanization and conversion. He was inspired by Sir Thomas More’s Utopia which imagined a land where people worked communally, governed by order and discipline. As bishop, Quiroga named the city of Pátzcuaro the capital of the diocese. There he founded the Seminary of San Nicolás, where the local P’uhrépecha population were taught Christian religion, government, and craftsmanship.

While the cristos de caña likely held Indigenous associations for the locals who made and used them, their association with Indigenous practices soon became de-contextualized in their use in churches throughout Mexico as well as in places as far away as Spain and the Canary Islands. While as scholars today we may be tempted to refer to the cristos de caña as hybrid objects for their merging of Indigenous technologies with Christian iconography, it is important as well to recognize that these ideas may not always have been relevant to the period in which they were made. The technology, producing lightweight and naturalistic bodies, suited itself well for the processional and devotional practices of the Spanish colonial world, revealing that Indigenous peoples, far from passive receptors of Spanish culture, left their mark, both seen and unseen.

Notes:

[1] This technique is believed to have been developed in the regions of Michoacán by members of the P’uhrépecha (also known as Tarascan) ethnic group.

[2] Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta, Historia ecclesiástica indiana, edited by Joaquín García Icazbalceta (Whitefish, MO: Kessinger Publishing, 1870).

[3] Analysis of the Señor de la Sacristía was borrowed from the work of Óscar Mazín and Dominique Elise Garcia. See Óscar Mazín, “Del Cristo de las Monjas al Señor de la Sacristía. Imágenes y relaciones sociales en Valladolid de Michoacán, siglo XVIII,” Historias, number 46 (2000), pp. 45–54 and Dominique Elise Garcia, “Materials of the Sacred: 16th to 18th Century Religious Materiality in Michoacán,” M.A. Thesis, University of California Riverside, 2012.

[4] As seen in the Cristo de Mexicaltzingo and the Señor de Totolapan – go to https://youtu.be/_2hbAKX51iw

Source:  Dr. Elena FitzPatrick Sifford, “Corn pith sculptures,” in Smarthistory, June 27, 2023, accessed July 23, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/corn-pith-sculptures/.

Imagine a two-dimensional artwork made of feathers instead of paint, pen, or pencil. The feathers rustle with the breeze or as you exhale, their iridescent qualities creating a luminous effect as you turn the artwork in your hands or lift it upwards. Feathered artworks were created in Mesoamerica before and after the Spanish Conquest in 1521, with Spaniards and other Europeans marveling at their shimmering beauty and originality.

A clash of traditions

In 1539, the Nahua noble and gobernador (governor) of Mexico City, Diego de Alvarado Huanitzin (nephew and son-in-law to Moctezuma II, the last Aztec ruler before Spanish colonial rule began in 1521), commissioned a featherwork for Pope Paul III showing the Mass of St. Gregory. This artwork, made of different types of bird feathers attached to a wood panel, is remarkable for several reasons. Not only is it the oldest surviving featherwork from colonial Mexico, but it was made by an Indigenous man in order to be sent to the Pope during the early period of Spanish colonization. Two years before the featherwork’s creation, Pope Paul III had issued the bull Sublimus Dei that decreed Amerindian peoples to be rational human beings complete with souls, and called for an end to their enslavement.

The subject of the Mass of St. Gregory was popular at this time because of its focus on transubstantiation—the belief that the bread and wine transform into the body and blood of Christ during Mass. Saint Gregory was an important 6th-century pope, and one day during Mass he raised the consecrated host (the bread) and experienced a miraculous vision of Christ on the altar. His vision offered proof that the bread literally became Christ’s body when consecrated. Christ appeared to Saint Gregory as the Man of Sorrows—a type of image of Christ, where he is shown above the waist, with his wounds displayed on his hands and side.

The featherwork production of The Mass of Saint Gregory was likely supervised by the famous Franciscan missionary, Pedro de Gante, who came to the Viceroyalty of New Spain (the Spanish colonies in North America) from Flanders to aid in converting the native peoples to Christianity. He established a well-known school that trained Indigenous men in European artistic conventions and techniques. Prints were often supplied as models for these Christian neophytes. The featherwork represents the clash of different worlds—its technique is Mesoamerican, but the subject is European and Christian.

Indigenous artists of early colonial Mexico learned about European artistic techniques and Christian subject matter in schools attached to conventos (missionary centers). Mexico City had some of the most famous, including the School of San Jose where Pedro de Gante worked. Some of the most common models supplied to the students were prints brought from Europe. The Mass of St. Gregory featherwork compares to Israhel van Meckenem’s The Mass of St. Gregory, c. 1490—suggesting the print came to New Spain and provided a model for the 1539 featherwork.

The instruments of the Passion of Christ (also known as the Arma Christi— specifically the instruments of Christ’s suffering, including the column, nails, sponge, cock, and flagellant whip) appear on or surrounding the altar in both van Meckenem’s print and the featherwork. Other colonial Mexican artworks—especially those used to aid in conversion of Indigenous populations—displayed passional instruments. On atrial crosses (crosses found in the courtyards, or atria, of missionary churches), for example, friars could point to the different Arma Christi as they taught native peoples about Christian dogma and biblical history.

Featherworks

Featherworks were among the most highly prized objects in the early post-Conquest period. Hernan Cortes sent feathered objects to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to dazzle him with their richness and unique qualities. Others, like Diego de Soto, carried packages of featherworks from New Spain to Spain to give to Charles V soon after the Spanish Conquest. Many featherworks found their way into cabinets of curiosities throughout Europe, no doubt collected because they symbolized the exotic “New World” across the Atlantic. Still today, feathered goods like the so-called Headdress of Moctezuma are some of the most prized possessions of European museums.

We find many Indigenous groups used feathers to adorn luxury goods, festoon clothing, and function within ceremonies. The Mexica (more commonly known as the Aztecs), were among those groups who prized feathers. Through long-distance trade, the Aztecs acquired feathers from afar. The most highly prized feathers—those of the resplendent quetzal—came from Guatemala. Hummingbirds, macaws, and many other birds supplied feathers. The Mexica also collected feathers as tribute from areas they conquered. Tribute lists illustrated in the Codex Mendoza, produced after the Spanish Conquest, demonstrate the large number of birds and feathers sent to the Aztec capital city, Tenochtitlan. In Tenochtitlan, featherworkers comprised their own special social class. They lived in a neighborhood called Amantla, which is why they were called amanteca.

The amanteca and their featherworks were both valuable, as indicated by the attention paid to them in the encyclopedic Florentine Codex, produced by the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun and his Indigenous collaborators between 1577–79. The Codex devotes many pages to the amanteca and provides numerous illustrations detailing how they worked, including how they glued feathers to flat surfaces.

Divine Light

As religious or devotional objects, iridescent featherworks like The Mass of St. Gregory seemed to communicate ideas about divine light. As air passed over their surface, the feathers rustled and moved, animating the object with a life force. Depending on how you held the object, the colors of the feathers seemed to transform as well. Green hummingbird feathers became purple or pink, corresponding to Christian notions of divine light. The iridescent qualities of feathers and their Christian symbolism compare to stained glass windows in Gothic cathedrals, all of which relate to Christ as the lux mundi (the light of the world).

The potential religious connotations of featherworks stimulated the creation of liturgical garments and objects made of feathers. Examples of bishops’ garments (like miters and stoles) and eucharistic altars still exist. Many of the liturgical garments were sent to Europe in the sixteenth century. We know, for instance, that Ferdinando I de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, actively collected featherworks and other items from colonial Mexico.

Several sixteenth-century eucharistic triptychs portray the Last Supper flanked by saints Peter and Paul. The central panel also includes a Latin inscription that relates the moment when Christ offers his body and blood—the very same words a priest would say during Mass at the moment of transubstantiation.

Additional resources:

“The Mass of St. Gregory,” in Painting a New World, exh. cat., ed. Donna pierce, Denver Art Museum (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), pp. 98–102 (available online).

Claire Bergeaud et Frédérique Vincent, “Feather Stories: The Saint Gregory Mass and the Ecouen Triptych,” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos, Colloques, mis en ligne le 25 janvier 2006.

Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Beth Harris, “A Renaissance miniature in wood and feathers,” in Smarthistory, September 29, 2020, accessed July 23, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/a-renaissance-miniature-in-wood-and-feathers/.

Priests and pirates

Around 1541, the first viceroy of the viceroyalty of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, commissioned a codex to record information about the Mexica (Aztec) Empire. The codex, now known as the Codex Mendoza, contained information about the lords of Tenochtitlan, the tribute paid to the Aztecs, and an account of life “from year to year.” The artist or artists were Indigenous, and the images were often annotated in Spanish by a priest that spoke Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Nahuas (the ethnic group to whom the Aztecs belonged). Viceroy Mendoza intended to send the Codex to the Spanish King, Emperor Charles V of Spain, although it never made it to Spain; French pirates acquired the Codex and it ended up in France. Upon its appearance in sixteenth-century France, it was acquired by André Thevet, the cosmographer to King Henry II of France, and Thevet included his name on several pages, including at the top of the Codex Mendoza’s frontispiece.

The Codex contains a wealth of information about the Aztecs and their empire. For instance, the Codex’s frontispiece relates information about the organization and foundation of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan—the place of the prickly pear cactus. Tenochtitlan was established in the middle of Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico in 1325.

Given that much of the former Aztec capital is below modern-day Mexico City, the Codex Mendoza frontispiece corroborates other information we have about the capital city and its origins. For instance, it shows us a schematic diagram of Tenochtitlan, with the city divided into four parts by intersecting blue-green undulating diagonals. The city was made of canals, similar to the Italian city of Venice, and was divided into four quarters. The image displays the quadripartite division of the city and the canals running through it. The division of the city into four parts was intended to mirror the organization of the universe, believed to be four parts aligned with the four cardinal directions (north, east, south, west), such as we see represented in the Codex Féjervary-Mayer.

Tenochtitlan

At the center of the schematic diagram of Tenochtitlan is an eagle on a cactus growing from the midst of a lake. The eagle and the cactus relate to the narrative surrounding the capital’s establishment. According to Aztec myth, their patron deity, Huitzilopochtli (Hummingbird Left), told the Aztecs’ ancestors to leave their ancestral home of Aztlan and look for a place where they saw an eagle atop a cactus growing from a rock. He informed them that when they saw this sign, they should settle and build their city. For the Aztecs, they observed the sign in the middle of Lake Texcoco, and so established their capital on an island in the lake.

The cactus upon which the eagle rests also symbolizes the place name of Tenochtitlan. The cactus is a nopal, or prickly pear cactus, which in Nahuatl is nochtli. The cactus grows from a stone, or tetl. When paired together, they form te-noch to connote the place of the prickly pear cactus, or Tenochtitlan. Today’s Mexican flag similarly displays the eagle on a nopal cactus growing from a stone in the middle of a lake, relating to the mythic origins of the Mexican capital.

Besides the eagle on the cactus, other figures and symbols on the frontispiece aid us in understanding the city’s foundation and early history. For instance, below the cactus and stone in the middle of the drawing is a war shield, indicating the Mexica did not settle peacefully in the Valley of Mexico. The simple structure above the eagle likely symbolizes a temple, possibly an early phase of the Templo Mayor, or the Aztecs’ main temple that was located at the heart of the city in the sacred precinct. To the right of the eagle is a simplified skull rack (tzompantli), another structure found near the Templo Mayor. Different types of plants, including maize, or corn, dot the city’s four quadrants, no doubt alluding to the agricultural fertility associated with the city.

Tenoch

Ten men are also depicted in the four quadrants, wearing white garments and displaying top knots in their hair. These figures are the men who led the Aztecs to this island location. Their name glyphs are attached to them in a manner typical of pre-Conquest manuscripts; a thin black line connects to a symbol that denotes their name. One man, different than the rest and seated to the left of the eagle, has gray skin, as well as a different hairstyle and red mark around his ear. These traits identify him as a priest because he let blood from his ear as offerings to deities and ash covers his skin. His name glyph identities his as Tenoch. Other motifs, such as the speech scroll coming from his mouth and the woven mat upon which he sits, convey his high status as well. Tenoch died in 1363, and the first Aztec tlatoani, or speaker (the ruler), was elected in 1375 by a council of elders.

Surrounding the entire page are year glyphs, beginning on the upper left with the date 2-House (1325 C.E.) and finishing (counter clock-wise) with the date 13-Reed. There are a total of fifty-one year glyphs. One year is marked—the year 2-Reed, which occurred twenty-six years after Tenochtitlan’s establishment; the reed has a cord wound around it and a fire drill appears above it. These symbols note that the year 2-Reed was the first year of a new 52-year cycle, the time during which new fire was drilled to begin the new cycle and signal the completion of the previous 52-year cycle. For the Aztecs, the New Fire ceremony occurred every 52 years—a complete cycle of the solar calendar—and it assured that the sun would rise again. Just prior to the beginning of a new cycle, new fire was drilled in the body of a sacrificial victim. After this point, the fire was distributed among people to light their homes.

Conquest

Below the schematic diagram of the city are two scenes of military conquest. The artist emphasizes the military power of the Aztecs by showing two soldiers in hierarchic scale: they physically tower over the two men they defeat. The Aztec warriors are also identified by their shields—identical to the one above that is associated with Tenochtitlan—and their obsidian-bladed weapons (called macana). The defeated men come from two different locations, both identified with place glyphs as Colhuacan and Tenayuca, both located around Lake Texcoco. In this case, burning temples paired with specific hills note that Colhuacan and Tenayuca were defeated. Spanish glosses also identify these place names as “colhuacan pueblo” and “tenoyucan pueblo.” This scene of conquest alludes to early Aztec military victories, which aided them in building their power even prior to their first official tlatoani came to power.

Digital edition of the Codex Mendoza

Aztec Society, Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies

Aztec Group codices, Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies

Spoken excepts from the Codex Mendoza in Nahuatl, Spanish, and English, Bodleian Libraries

Source: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, “Frontispiece of the Codex Mendoza,” in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed July 13, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/frontispiece-of-the-codex-mendoza/.

A dark skinned figure holding a cross hangs by a noose from a wooden scaffold. His lifeless body slumps downward, a head of dark curls. The figure is likely the first visual rendering of an African in the Americas. It is found within the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, a manuscript created in central Mexico in the mid-sixteenth century that includes a ritual feast calendar, a divinatory almanac, and a chronicle of 350 years of Mexica history, and which was created by Indigenous artist-scribes, known in Nahuatl as tlacuiloque.

This image records the events of a slave uprising that took place in Mexico City in 1537, and along with a handful of other images, provides a view of the often violent colonial encounter between Spaniards, Africans, and Indigenous peoples, with Indigenous artists playing an important role in documenting the contact period using centuries old literary and pictorial traditions. The artists who created the Codex Telleriano-Remensis likely copied the images from several earlier Mesoamerican texts, yet the cataclysmic changes of the colonial period necessitated the introduction of new iconographies, resulting in a hybrid document that merges Indigenous and European modes of representation and record keeping.

Manuscripts through contact and conquest

In 1519 when the conquistador Hernán Cortés reached the Gulf Coast of Mexico, he was entering an empire ruled by an ethnic group called the Mexica. They ruled from their capital located in the highland basin of Mexico in a city called Tenochtitlan (modern-day Mexico City). Some of the most revered and highly educated members of their society were the tlacuiloque (singular tlacuilo) who practiced a picture-writing tradition that combined glyphs and images for writing and record keeping, a tradition which dated back millennia in Central Mexico.

Although many Indigenous manuscripts were destroyed by Spanish colonizers after the conquest of 1521, new manuscripts were commissioned that merged Mesoamerican and European writing and artistic systems. They were created by Indigenous artists who had been trained in the tradition and who continued many Mesoamerican conventions while merging them with imported European texts and pictorial styles.

One such manuscript is the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. Throughout it, the figures are rendered in profile with large heads, frontally faced eyes, and exaggerated facial features, as was typical of Mesoamerican manuscripts from Central Mexico. While the first two sections of the manuscript follow earlier Mesoamerican conventions quite closely, the chronicle (called xiuhtlapohualamoxtli) augments the traditional historical annals (recording of historic events) to include the early events of the contact and conquest period. It is within this context that a tlacuilo of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis recorded the events of the 1537 slave uprising.

Early colonial Indigenous manuscripts featuring images of Africans

The revolt was the result of a plot between an African “king” who along with Indigenous allies plotted to overthrow the Spaniards and take over their lands. [1] In the image that accompanies the description of the revolt, the artist incorporates a Black African phenotype into a manuscript that retains much of its Central Mexican figural style. The artists use skin color, hair style, clothing, and headgear to differentiate between the various ethnic and racial groups within the annals. The Indigenous figures on the same page, located to the left of the African figure, are shown wearing a standard male hair style with bangs. They sport tilma garments, likely fashioned from maguey fibers, identifying them as Mexica commoners.

Such observations of difference had long standing precedent in Central Mexican visual culture, which is expanded here to include newly arrived European and African groups. [2]

We see curiosity about and recording of racial difference in other written and illustrated sources from the colonial period as well. The Florentine Codex, for example, discusses Mexica Emperor Moctezuma II sending scouts to the coast to survey Cortés’s recently arrived fleet. The text, made up of ethnographic interviews of elder Nahuas, mentions in Nahuatl that some of the men had ocolochtic, or tightly curled hair. The accompanying Spanish translation, written opposite the Nahuatl, reads: “Among the Spaniards came Blacks, who had crisply curled dark hair.” Note how the Nahuatl text mentions only the hair type while the Spanish translation also makes note of their skin color. This difference is important because it reveals to us some key differences between European and Indigenous conceptions of Blackness that may explain the prominence of Africans within several early contact period Indigenous manuscripts.

An image showing the march of Cortes into Tenochtitlan within the Codex Azcatitlan, a mid-sixteenth century manuscript created by tlacuiloque in the city of Tlatelolco, is particularly poignant for its revelation of the multi-ethnic and multi-racial reality of the colonial encounter. On this page we see two types of Indigenous people as well as two types of Spaniards (African and European).

Leading the group is Malinche, an Indigenous Nahua noblewoman from the Gulf Coast who became an interpreter for Cortés. She perhaps serves as a liminal figure between Cortés, directly behind her, and Moctezuma who was presumably on the far left hand slide of a now lost adjacent folio.

Behind Cortés and an armed henchman stands the singular African in the group holding a spear and reins belonging to the dismounted leader. This figure may reference a man named Juan Garrido, an auxiliary in Cortés’s militia who was born in Africa but lived in Seville in Spain before traveling to the Americas. Garrido famously petitioned the Spanish King Charles I for a royal pension in return for his involvement in several conquest missions between 1508 to 1519, including those of Puerto Rico, Cuba, Florida, and Mexico. [3] Garrido is pictured as part of the Spanish retinue, trailed by a grouping of armored henchmen.

Trailing Malinche, Cortés, and Garrido are three Indigenous porters, likely Tlaxcalans who had allied themselves with Cortés to defeat their enemies, the Mexica. All of the figures are differentiated via skin color, dress, hairstyle, and related objects. Malinche’s skin is painted a light brown, which contrasts with the much darker color of Garrido. She wears her hair in two horn-like braids typical of female Nahua-speakers. Again, as in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, the Black figure is rendered with cropped curly hair.

In the image, the Spanish retinue (including Malinche and Garrido) is rendered along a rolling path that serves as a horizon line. The Tlaxcalans, however, are divorced from that perspectival space and two of three seem to hover above the horizon, perhaps aligned with Indigenous modes of representation more concerned with legibility over naturalism. As some scholars have noted, European perspectival drawing was used for sections of the manuscript most relevant to Spanish interests. [4] With this subtle difference in perspective, we can imagine that the Indigenous artists and onlookers pictured both Garrido and Malinche as Spanish while the Tlaxcalans retain their Indigenous identity.

Blackness through Indigenous eyes

The earlier interest by Indigenous artists of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis and Codex Azcatitlan likely displays a view of Blackness that was still unentangled with Spanish notions of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. Indeed the color Black and even Black or Blackened skin held positive connotations in Mesoamerican worldview. In the Florentine Codex the Black conquistadors are referred to as “soiled gods,” connecting them with sacred power associated with darkness. Mexica priests and political leaders at times would paint their bodies Black using salves derived from potent hallucinogenic or poisonous plants. The Black paint associated the body with the power of male deities and provided bodily protection during rituals, especially those involving caves—dark spaces that were seen as transitional portals of emergence and descent into the underworld. Given that Black skin held such prestige, it follows that Indigenous artists and informants took special note of the dark skin of certain members of the Spanish retinue.

These manuscripts are our earliest visual records of the encounter, and feature an Indigenous viewpoint. Later visual culture, dominated by Hispanized artists, tend to leave out the African presence in images that showed the conquest. By the seventeenth century, for example, the conquest scene pictured on a folding screen orbiombo displays the homogenous binary of white European Spaniards versus brown Indigenous Mexica. Multiethnic categories are largely ignored and the Africans amongst the Spanish retinue are completely absent.

By the seventeenth century, Black Africans instead came to be seen largely in mythologized or stereotyped imagery. This could take the form of positive images of Blackness, such as in images of Black saints or the Black magus. Black figures were also pictured as personifications of Africa within a grouping of four, each figure serving as an allegory for one of the four known continents. Afro descendants were also pictured within casta paintings of the eighteenth century, oftentimes embodying negative stereotypes associated with Blackness in a white supremacist society.

The image of the March into Tenochtitlan in the Codex Azcatitlan is notable for its articulation of the multi-racial and multi-ethnic realities of the Spanish conquest. The Indigenous authors pay particular attention to the Black member of the Spanish retinue, giving him pride of place within the composition. Similarly, the image from the Codex Telleriano-Remens is notable for its recoding of an African figure. Combined with Mesoamerican glyphs, the tlacuilo illustrates the discord of the colonial period, possibly alluding to alliances between Black and Indigenous rebels during the 1537 uprising in Mexico City. Taken together, the images provide us with a new precedent for the recording of Africans and their descendants in the Americas, recorded by Indigenous artists rather than the assumption that European artists were the first to document and record the various peoples who formed the fabric of a burgeoning society. The images of Africans recorded by the Indigenous tlacuiloque stand out in the visual record for their early date and the ways that they add nuance to our understanding of the cross-cultural encounters of the early colonial period.

The Renaissance — not just in Italy

The term “renaissance” generally invokes images of Italian cities, buildings, and artworks, rather than images of American ones. However, the renaissance had tremendous repercussions on the American continents, and its influence can be found from Philadelphia to Buenos Aires. In fact it might be more useful to think of the renaissance not as a European phenomenon at all, but as a wide-ranging cultural movement that centered on the rebirth and rediscovery of classical (ancient Greek and Roman) culture that sparked many innovations and changes in architecture, urbanism, pictorial art, theatre, science, literature, and more.

Cities, buildings, and architects in New Spain

Spanish colonizers and criollos believed that adopting specific classicizing architectural styles from Europe helped to give their civic and religious buildings a sense of proper decorum. The idea of what constituted decorous architecture derived from Greek and Roman philosophical and architectural sources, including those written by Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, and even Isidore of Seville.

In the sixteenth century, cities were considered to embody an ideal of sophisticated and refined living. This is an ancient idea that took root among peoples in Spain during the medieval period. In the Hispanic world, the term for this idea of a civilized urban center was policía (which derives from the ancient Greek term polis, meaning city). This idea of the ordered urban center was brought to the Americas where the structure and building of cities became one of the most important colonizing strategies of the Spaniards.

One of the regions in the Americas that saw a resurgence of classical culture was Mexico. From the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, the territory roughly comprised by present-day Mexico, the midwestern and southwestern U.S., and parts of Central America was known as New Spain — a territory claimed and ruled by the Spanish Crown. Throughout this period, towns and cities in the central and southern part of New Spain (by far the most populated of the territory) grew in size. They were inhabited by a diverse population that included Spanish colonizers, criollos (the offspring of Spanish colonizers born in the Americas), Indigenous peoples of diverse ethnic origin, Africans (originally brought as slaves, many later becoming freed citizens), small communities of other Europeans, Asians, conversos (Jewish people who had been converted to Christianity), and many ethnic mixtures in between.

Cities acquired a prominent place in the colonizing strategies of the Spaniards. Spanish colonizers and criollos  adopted architectural styles from Europe in an effort to validate their civic and religious institutions. Cities participated in dividing peoples along ethnic lines to create social and racial hierarchies. During the sixteenth century, cities were created for Indigenous peoples, while other cities were created for Spaniards and their offspring, in what was a clear effort to segregationist effort on behalf of the Spanish colonizers. Cities for Indigenous peoples were termed repúblicas de indios, while repúblicas de españoles was the term employed for cities destined for European colonizers and their offspring. In the repúblicas de españoles—and also in the república de indios, but arguably to a lesser extent—the preferred architectural language of the most representative buildings was classical in style.

Residences for elite families or buildings such as city halls, educational institutions, and hospitals, drew from classical architectural sources. In a plan of Mexico City’s central square drawn in 1596,  we can see that some of the most important buildings of the city had portals with classical elements such as columned porticoes. Mexico City at the time must have been (architecturally speaking) reminiscent of towns in the Iberian Peninsula (such as Trujillo or Cáceres, both in the region of Extremadura, the birthplace of conquerors and architects, like Francisco Becerra).

Religious architecture, including cathedrals, monasteries, and church-sponsored buildings such as hospitals and orphanages, were also designed to employ the language of classical architecture—to indicate proper decorum and appropriateness.

The façade of the Convento de Tecali is considered to be one of the most refined late-Renaissance designs in New Spain.  Some elements, like the proportions of the architectural orders, were likely taken from a treatise like the one by Sebastiano Serlio, an Italian architect who published a profusely illustrated treatise in the 16th century, which was extremely influential in both Europe and the Spanish Americas.

Architects, patrons, and their sources

Some of the first classically trained architects, like Claudio de Arciniega and Francisco Becerra who arrived in New Spain (from Spain) began practicing their trade during the latter part of the sixteenth century. Their presence signaled the arrival of late-Renaissance architecture to the viceroyalty.

The façade and portal of the Casa del Deán, the residence of the dean of the Cathedral Chapter of the City of Puebla, showcases the classicizing renaissance influences brought to New Spain. The design of this urban palace has been attributed to Becerra, an architect born in Extremadura, Spain. The dean, named Tomás de la Plaza, was known to be a humanist, a person who studied classical literature and culture, which explains his choice of the classical style for his residence.

Even prior to their arrival, the first viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza (who ruled from 1535–1550), was well-versed in matters of architecture, and was known to have possessed copies of the architectural treatises by Vitruvius (the ancient Roman architect) and Leon Battista Alberti (the Renaissance architect). These treatises were the most important vehicles of transmission of classical architectural forms. We see the likely influence of these publications in the official architecture that was built during the sixteenth century in the viceroyalty, and the way cities such as Puebla and Mexico City were being designed and developed. For Europeans in New Spain, just as in Europe, these treatises represented the pinnacle of architectural theory; they were the accepted repository of knowledge regarding what classical architecture was, the knowledge needed to practice the discipline of architecture, and the manner of properly designing and constructing buildings and cities.

Complicating Classicism

By the start of the seventeenth century, it appeared clear that the classical architectural tradition had taken root. At the same time, it was also clear that the Indigenous and mestizo builders who constituted the bulk of the work force in New Spain, had also established a style of their own. This was especially the case in towns and cities that were more distant from the repúblicas de españoles.

In reality, this architectural style had been there all along, as some of the first monasteries erected by the mendicant missionaries together with the native workers and builders, were fascinating architectural combinations of European influences—including Gothic, Mannerist, Plateresque, Mudéjar, and classicizing Italianate—combined with Indigenous traits and attributes.

We see this in the façade of the Convento de Huaquechula, for instance, approximately 56 km (35 miles) south of the City of Puebla. It has a main portal of carved stone that displays native sculptural traits, such as floral designs in an Indigenous style, in which the stigmata are represented as a native motif of a bleeding wound (center of the image, on the spandrel within a coat of arms held by a cherub). The stigmata was a symbol employed by the Franciscan Order, reminiscent of their founder, St. Francis of Assisi, who received the stigmata. Today, this style has been called at times mestizo, other times hybrid, with no consensus among experts on a definitive term.

Once the classical language of architecture took hold, it appeared to start its transformation into the next big architectural wave, which art historians often call the Baroque — which constituted the most developed and fascinating architectural tradition to flourish during the viceregal period in New Spain and other Spanish dominions in the Americas. It bears remembering, however, that Baroque architecture in New Spain and elsewhere borrowed elements from the classical language of architecture as a basis for articulating and ordering its own vocabulary.

Additional resources

Mission churches as theaters of conversion in New Spain

Aristotle, “Book IV,” in Nicomachean Ethics, The Internet Classics Archive

In Mexico City’s main plaza, a bustling scene unfolds before our eyes. Horse-drawn carriages carry the city’s elite. Most people are on foot, and some can be seen promenading in a line at the canvas’s bottom edge. Other people congregate before the city’s massive cathedral on the left. Temporary tents are pitched in the furthest portion of the plaza, with people selling their goods. A more permanent structure made of stone surrounds even more shops in the foreground. Looking at the hundreds of individuals depicted here, we see a kaleidoscope of dress and accoutrements. We also see an artist attempting to represent the diverse ethnic makeup of the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain.

This painting, by the famous artist Cristóbal de Villalpando from about 1695, is well-known for its subject. It shows the large market (called the Parián) in the Plaza Mayor (or Zócalo) of Mexico City, which existed until the 19th century when it was demolished (you won’t see it in the Zócalo today). Its name was borrowed from its counterpart in Manila (in the Philippines, which was also controlled by Spain at this time). Merchants brought goods from across oceans to sell to the residents of the city in the Parián. Mexico City, and the broader territory of New Spain, were at the center of a large network of global trade.

Goods, people, and ideas travelled from Manila (having themselves come from many parts of Asia) to the port city of Acapulco via galleons (sailing ships often called Manila Galleons). From Acapulco, these goods either made their way to Mexico City or were carried to Veracruz on the Gulf Coast, at which point they’d be shipped across the Atlantic to Europe. Goods flowed likewise from Europe to New Spain. What makes this center even more complex and fascinating is that it did not just receive goods from Europe and Asia, but likewise sent finished goods and natural resources across the Atlantic and Pacific, and even down the coasts to the viceroyalty of Peru. Silver was among the most popular materials to travel to Asia from the Americas. The constant flow of objects, ideas, raw materials, and people added to the dynamic character of New Spain, and especially in a city like Mexico City which had a worldwide reputation as a beautiful, wealthy city energized by the constant influx of things.

Transpacific trade and cosmopolitanism

Lacquerwares, folding screens, ivories, spices, silks, Chinese porcelain—these are but some of the many objects and natural resources that traveled across the Pacific from Asia to New Spain. Goods were often labeled as “de China” or “from China—a reference to something coming from what we call Asia today, and not paying close attention to where things originated specifically in Asia. In Villalpando’s painting, in the stone Parián enclosure it seems that some merchants are selling cloth, possibly silk, indicated by the multicolored lengths of fabric hanging from individual stalls.

Artists in New Spain began to adapt the forms and visual modes they encountered in these foreign goods, developing new art forms or modifying older ones. Japanese folding screens were popular trade items that stimulated Novohispanic artists to adapt the Japanese byobu (folding screens) into biombos. Many paintings, prints, sculptures, and furniture also incorporate representations of things that made their way to New Spain via trade networks.

For example, we find Chinese blue-and-white porcelains represented on altars with sculptures of Christ, or locally produced ceramics adapting Chinese motifs, such as with talavera poblana (local ceramic production in Puebla). Clearly, the flow of goods through places like the Parian, that Villalpando so dynamically captures in paint, affected many different aspects of Novohispanic culture.

The transpacific trade also resulted in Asian peoples coming to new Spain, where they or their descendants worked in cities like Acapulco, but also Puebla and Mexico City. While some were enslaved, others worked in many different trades and occupations—adding yet again to the diverse society of the Spanish viceroyalty that Villalpando represents here.

A history painting?

Adding to the lively scene are details like dogs running or playing, children, people engaged in conversation, and people on the canal (that no longer remains today). This is an idealized view of daily life in Mexico City, where all peoples seem to exist in relative harmony.

Villalpando crafts a painting that gives the impression of a snapshot, or a realistic portrayal of Mexico City’s main plaza. Nevertheless, he took certain liberties. The Parian was under construction when he painted the scene, and here it looks more majestic than it likely did (and even more symmetrical than it actually was). One account describes it as “horrible,” in reference to its unsightliness. [1] The entrance to the viceroy’s palace is also larger than it was, perhaps a way to elevate the dignity of the viceroy himself.

The painting shows identifiable structures, many of which still stand today. Villalpando took great care to detail fabrics and faces, animals and spaces, almost creating a visual argument that this really is what the Zocalo looked like. The painting also references a recent important event in New Spain’s history: the burning and partial destruction of the viceroy’s palace after uprisings in 1692 over food shortages. The large horizontal palace in the back of the painting shows the partially destroyed structure. Villalpando also includes clear topographic features in his painting to situate the scene in Mexico City. In the far background we see the snow capped volcanoes of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl—still famous today for their appearance above the skyline of Mexico City. Even the angle that Villalpando chose to depict the city is considered correct; he possibly observed the Zocalo from the top of one of the houses from the western side of the plaza.

Shopping

The painting’s focus on shopping and material consumerism reinforces the wealth of many criollo (Spaniards born in the Americas) and peninsulare (Spaniards from the Iberian Peninsula) residents of Mexico City and New Spain more broadly who had amassed fortunes from silver mining and other means. Villalpando’s portrayal of the residents of Mexico City as active consumers extends beyond the upper levels of society, but this is an idealized vision of the Zócalo and the city’s inhabitants. In reality, anxieties over ethnic mixing and blurred social divisions existed, as the later genre of casta paintings so explicitly communicate. Sumptuary laws tried to restrict not only what people could wear in public, but who could wear them. In Villalpando’s painting, people of many different social stations wear luxurious clothes and jewelry.

The cosmopolitan nature of Mexico City, with its steady influx of luxury goods from afar, meant that there was a desire to own and wear fanciful things. But there was also the fear that those of lower social status could give an impression of being above their station by wearing nice things. Travelers passing through Mexico City comment on how even servants were seen in pearls—to them an oddity and a social transgression.

An ideal projection

For all of its attention to detail, Villalpando’s painting should not be read as an accurate image of what life was actually like in its lived experience for everyone in the capital of New Spain. The painting celebrates the city, the viceroyalty, its wealth, and its cosmopolitanism—but it is an ideal projection. It was commissioned by the viceroy Gaspar de Silva, Count of Gelves, who had been responsible for the food shortages in the 1690s. He apparently paid for the painting, and returned to Spain with it. The vision that Villalpando projects undoubtedly appealed to the viceroy who wished to believe that he had brought prosperity to the Spanish colony.

Notes:

[1] Richard Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 1493–1793 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 161

Additional resources

Barbara Mundy and Dana Leibsohn, “Patterns of the Everyday,” on Vistas: Visual Culture in the Spanish Americas, 1521–1820

Source: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, “Cristóbal de Villalpando, View of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City,” in Smarthistory, February 22, 2021, accessed July 23, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/villalpando-plaza-mayor-mexico-city/.

Renaissance architecture and humanist culture in Puebla, Mexico

Close to Puebla’s cathedral and central square stands the once palatial residence known as the Casa del Deán or The Dean’s House. It was built around the year 1580, but most of the residence was demolished in 1953 to make room for a modern cinema house. Thanks to preservation activists, a fragment of the palatial residence survived—the façade and two upstairs rooms that contain a fascinating mural program, including elaborately dressed figures riding on horseback in a procession that takes place amongst rolling hills, patches of woods, bodies of water, mountains, and hamlets.

What remains of the residence is an outstanding example of renaissance architecture and murals made in the viceroyalty of New Spain. The building and murals also speak to the importance of renaissance humanism in the city after the Spanish conquest of surrounding lands in 1521 initiated waves of evangelization and colonization. Renaissance humanist ideas were important to some of the Spanish colonizers, as they believed Humanism, which was the study of Classical literature and sources, represented some of the outstanding traits of European and Spanish civilization.Tomás de la Plaza was known to be a humanist, a person who studied classical literature and culture, which explains his choice of the classical style for his residence.

With Spanish colonization underway, wealthy Spanish colonizers adopted the urban palatial residences found in Italy and Spain. Such palaces were built for high-ranking clerics and even some Indigenous noble families who enjoyed privileges for having fought alongside Spanish forces against the Mexica. Residences of the elite class formed part of the urban fabric in towns such as Puebla, where the religious and civil buildings designed along classical (ancient Greek and Roman) lines embodied the concept of urbanitas, or urban refinement and decorum. Spanish colonizers viewed the city as the site of their “civilizing” efforts.

Like their prototypes in Italy and Spain, these renaissance palaces were used to to flaunt the magnificence and political weight of the urban elite. In Spain, while many palaces display a classicizing renaissance style, there is also the influence of plateresque, mudéjar, and gothic ornamentation.

The urban palaces built in New Spain likewise displayed a mixture of classicizing, plateresque, mudéjar, and gothic ornamentation on their façades. Few examples of those palacios from the 16th century remain in present-day Mexico, and one of the most remarkable examples is the Casa del Deán.

An urban residential palace in Puebla

The Spanish-born, high-ranking cleric named Tomás de la Plaza was the Dean of Puebla’s Cathedral Chapter and held important administrative roles. The design of the Dean’s House façade is attributed to the Spanish architect Francisco Becerra, who had come from Spain to design buildings that signaled the Spanish Catholic presence, including Puebla’s impressive new cathedral—a project De la Plaza was also involved with. Becerra was well-trained in classically-informed architecture, which he had practiced since he was a young man in his native Extremadura.

De la Plaza (the Dean) may have asked Becerra to remodel an existing building he had acquired. Becerra’s design for the entry portal possesses a sense of rhythm and repetition that lends the building a coherent sense of order (although it has been disrupted in its present state).

The balconies we see today were originally windows and the lower floor entries have changed in their dimensions and forms (see hypothetical reconstruction).

The palace also demonstrates the important role that classical architectural principles had among some elite, intellectual Spaniards who participated in the colonial enterprise. The residence portal of the Casa del Deán reminds us of Sebastiano Serlio’s popular 16th-century treatise, The Book of Architecture, that borrowed from classical architecture and ideas, and which would influence a great deal of architecture throughout the Spanish Americas.

The lower level of the portal consists of an entry flanked by two engaged Doric columns on pedestals. The columns are fluted and sit below a robust entablature, which carries the second-story balcony. This second story balcony is fitted with a pair of rusticated jambs and lintels that are flanked by engaged and fluted columns with Ionic capitals. These columns support a cartouche of Tomás de la Plaza’s family coat of arms (now partially missing). The frieze displays the words Plaça Decanus (Plaza, the Dean), and the building’s year of completion, 1580. Flanking the upper-level balcony are two ogee windows, characterized by having a cusped lintel. These windows are complemented by classical pediments above them. Each pediment at Casa del Deán displays a sculpted scallop shell at its center—a possible sign of devotion, on behalf of de la Plaza, to St. James, the patron saint of Spain. Each window is crowned by an elegant finial.

From this doorway, a person walked into a covered vestibule space (known in Spanish as zaguán) that led into an open courtyard, encircled by a series of rooms on two levels. At Casa del Deán, the stairs were at the left hand of the main entry. The lower level was used for storage, to house horses, and for service spaces; sometimes lower-level rooms were rented out to shopkeepers or artisans. The upper level was known as the piano nobile, an Italian term that designates the living spaces of a residence. It included bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and sometimes even a small chapel. At Casa del Deán, the only two extant rooms were probably a living or dining room, and another one may have been a a study room.

The Casa del Deán’s murals 

Besides its architecture, the most intriguing aspect of the Casa del Deán is its murals. In each of its two surviving halls, there is a cycle of mural paintings done in tempera, each one with a specific program and visual imagery. The Hall of the Sibyls is based on the figures of the Greek oracles that, during the renaissance period, were understood as pre-Christian prophetesses who predicted the coming of Jesus. The sibyls are depicted at Casa del Deán in a processional cycle, all of them riding on horseback. in the ancient Hellenic world, the sibyls were considered to be itinerant, which means they traveled from town to town performing their divinations, and this probably explains the reason they were represented on horseback at Casa del Deán. Each sibyl is holding a standard (type of flag) and a symbol or emblem of their prophecies. All are elaborately dressed, and their procession takes place against a picturesque landscape of rolling hills, patches of woods, bodies of water, mountains, and hamlets. These pastoral environments were referred to as a locus amoenus, a phrase in Latin meaning “beautiful place,” a common setting for classical literature and art in the pre-modern era. Framing the sibyls’ procession, at the top and bottom, are two elaborate horizontal friezes, in which putti mingle with birds, fruits, flowers, and vines, a veritable representation of a garden of delights.

Each of of the sibyls’ names are inscribed next to them, although some names became illegible over time, and their identities are now unclear. There are twelve visible sibyls in total, and each one carries a standard revealing their prophesies, which are all related to the coming, life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The sibyl that starts the procession is called the Synagogue sybil, so-named because she represents the Old Testament. She is followed by the Erithrean sybil, who prophesied the Annunciation, and behind her is the Samian sybil, who prophesied the Nativity, and so on, ending the procession with a sybil whose name has been erased, who most likely prophesied the Ascension of Christ to the heavens.

The other hall contains a representation of the narrative poem, Triumphs (c.1351) by the Italian poet and humanist Petrarch,  that was much admired in the late medieval and renaissance eras. The essence of the poem spoke of a transition from sin to Christian salvation. Petrarch populated the poem with a series of allegorical figures—Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time, and Eternity—that later artists often represented as a series of triumphal carts, pulled by horses, stags, or fantastical creatures such as unicorns. The murals in this room display a version of those allegorical figures in their carts.

The triumph represented in the figure above, a chariot pulled by two white unicorns, represents the Triumph of Chastity or Virtuosity. Unicorns were, in the European medieval period, considered to be a symbol of virtuosity too, an animal which was believed to be real but elusive and of a shy nature. The chariot is driven by a young female. The young woman is Laura, the love of Petrach to whom he dedicated the Triumphs. Laura is also, in this case, the embodiment of virtuosity or chastity. The women behind the chariot carry a palm in their hands, a symbol of victory in the ancient world. The embodiment of chastity carries a palm too, together with a torch, a symbol in the ancient world of a condition of enlightenment or purification.

The triumphant chariot driven by Laura can be seen running over a pair of people, a man dressed as a monk and a woman. The monk could represent Petrarch himself, who was a canon, a post of lesser rank in the Catholic Church. Petrarch made a vow of chastity but was still believed to have fathered two children. The woman in the picture could be interpreted as Eve herself, a symbol of the loss of virtuosity in Christian symbolism. This mixture of pagan (ancient classical) and Christian symbols interacting together is an interesting aspect of the representation of the Triumphs at the Casa del Deán.

Some interesting aspects of the murals are contained in the details and the backgrounds. For instance, in both halls the murals depict vistas that are reminiscent of Northern European landscape painting.

However, even if at first glance the murals at the Dean’s House are reminiscent of European art, details reveal the Indigenous background of the artists. For one, many of the animals depicted in the mural cycles are native to the Americas, such as monkeys, jaguars, opossums, coyotes, and javelinas, and they reveal traces of Amerindian iconography.

In the Hall of the Triumphs we find further evidence of the Indigenous origin of the artists, such as representations of animals in cartouches (with anthropomorphic attributes), which are shown in a series of roles, such as scribes, musicians, or dancers.

Interestingly, monkeys were held in very high regard by Mesoamerican cultures. The eleventh day of calendar was symbolized by a monkey and in some mythical narratives, like the Popol Vuh, monkeys were considered closely related to humans. In contrast, medieval Europeans considered monkeys to represent sin and debauchery. It is telling how, at Casa del Deán, monkeys are depicted carrying out human-like behaviors and in the friezes are seen with the characteristically Mesoamerican symbol of the spoken word (which looks like a little cloud close to the character’s mouth). Additionally, the monkeys depicted at Casa del Deán share many similarities with Mesoamerican depictions of these animals in pre-Hispanic or early post-Conquest documents, like the Borgia Codex.

We also see the presence of Indigenous objects, such as a jaguar depicted as a warrior holding a macuáhuitl (an Indigenous mallet used as a weapon) and a typical pre-Hispanic round shield.

Penny Morrill has argued that the artists at work in the Casa del Deán might have trained at a Franciscan monastery in the Puebla-Tlaxcala region. [1] De la Plaza, who arrived to New Spain at the age of 19, traveled the territories that comprise present-day Oaxaca and Puebla states extensively as a missionary, where he may have acquired an affection and appreciation for native cultures, which he subtly displayed in his home’s murals. Additionally, it is worthwhile to note that de la Plaza, like many educated colonialists, might have had access to prints, which were a common visual source utilized by Indigenous artists to recreate European aesthetics and visual forms.

An important architectural relic

The Casa del Deán responded to notions of magnificence and decorum (the idea that individual buildings contribute to the beauty and magnificence of a city), while reaffirming the social standing of the residence’s owner and the cultural values that he stood for. The murals in the residence’s private spaces also responded to the intellectual and theological concerns of de la Plaza. The influence of Indigenous artistic styles and the presence of native cultural symbols in the frescoes is important, because in colonial societies, the colonized groups—as was the case with the Indigenous peoples of Mexico—were not often allowed to flaunt or display their cultural values, most often deemed inferior and undesirable by the colonizers. On the other hand, the Casa del Deán testifies to the importance of renaissance classicism and humanist culture in New Spain, and Puebla in particular, as part of the belief system of the Spanish colonizers and the values they upheld in the cities they established in the Americas.

Source: Dr. Juan Luis Burke, “La Casa del Deán in Puebla,” in Smarthistory, August 26, 2022, accessed July 23, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/casa-del-dean-puebla/.

Standing at Puebla de los Ángeles’s central plaza, one can see people walking under tall, leafy trees and passing by the beautiful baroque water fountain in the square’s center. The square and its delimiting streets are of an exacting geometry: the square is a perfectly traced rectangle lined by arcades on three of its sides.

The rounded Roman half arches that make up those arcades are built of grey basaltic stone typical of many of the city’s historical constructions and supported by classical columns made of the same material. Above the arcades are rows of buildings of equal height, while on the fourth side of the plaza, toward the south, stands the imposing city cathedral, which towers above the square, severe looking in its basaltic grey stone finish and carefully crafted classical ornamentation.

The city was built on a grid plan—a series of intersecting orthogonal streets with a square at the middle where the most important civil and religious buildings coexisted, with orderly rows of buildings of similar heights lining the streets. This grid plan was the result of a long tradition of ideas about how cities should be designed.

Located in central Mexico, Puebla is today a large, thriving city. It is well-known for its colonial urban design, which was influenced by ideas about renaissance classicism, including concepts of order, perspective, and decorum (propriety or appropriateness). These concepts (discussed more below) arrived in the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain (as Mexico was known during its colonial period) together with the Spanish colonizers, who employed these notions to establish many cities in the Spanish Americas. Renaissance classicism not only influenced the way cities were designed, but also shaped and influenced other forms of cultural expression, such as architecture, books, and painting.

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Renaissance humanism and classicism

What do we mean by renaissance classicism? Classicism here refers to that which is tied to ancient Greek and Roman cultures, while the related term renaissance humanism (known as studia humanitatis during the early modern period) was an intellectual movement that changed and renovated European thinking through the study of classical texts by the ancient Greeks and Romans, starting sometime in the late 14th century. To a large extent, the Italian renaissance—understood as a broad cultural movement—was fueled by humanism, given that the renaissance sought to study those classical texts and apply them to aesthetic and practical ends, such as the pictorial arts, literature, urbanism, and architecture, among others. It is broadly accepted that renaissance classicism began in northern Italy, spreading to other parts of Europe soon after, including Spain, and from there to the American continent via European colonizers.

The classical architectural tradition in Puebla de los Ángeles

Puebla was founded originally by Spaniards as a city exclusively for European colonizers. From its humble origins in 1531, Puebla grew quickly. It is estimated that the city had some 800 households by 1570. By 1600 that number had risen to about 1,500 households distributed in some 120 urban blocks.

The city’s central core, known as the traza principal or “main layout,” was the city’s most densely populated area. The plaza principal or main plaza marked the center of the city and contained a public water fountain and a pillory. Around the square stood important buildings made out of durable, stone masonry like the city hall and eventually an ambitious new cathedral building. Close to the main plaza stood the residences of the city’s elite (who were overwhelmingly Spaniards or criollos, their offspring). Meanwhile, in the city’s peripheries, communities of Indigenous migrants who came from neighboring native cities like Cholula or Huejotzingo (or some from the towns close to Mexico City, like Texcoco) lived in more informal constructions made out of adobe or shacks called jacales. Cramped tenements were also scattered throughout the city for the poorest inhabitants.

Puebla de los Ángeles quickly became New Spain’s second most important urban center and populous city after the viceroyalty’s capital, Mexico City. It was also an important artistic market for the whole viceroyalty and a popular destination for builders, thanks to wealthy elite Spanish colonizers. After settling in the Americas, they not only wished to emulate and replicate (as much as possible) the lifestyles and built environments of Spain, but also considered their way of life superior to that of the Native population, which was a reason they felt it their obligation to convert the Native population to their ideas about the benefit of living in cities. Most Indigenous towns in Mesoamerica, prior to the arrival of Europeans, were less dense than European cities. People lived scattered in the country, their homes surrounded by parcels of land. Residential units surrounded a core urban center where the community’s temples, markets, and the local elite lived. Mesoamerican cities also possessed deep connections to their natural environment, such as rivers, mountains, valleys, and more,  which in turn connected their towns and villages to their cosmological belief system. Considering these traits, the Mesoamerican and European traditions differed greatly. In this way, renaissance classicism was part of a larger colonial enterprise that included the imposition of language, religion, and even the shaping of the built environment in the Spanish Americas.

In Spain, classicism would become the primary architectural style (over gothic, mudéjar, and plateresque ornamentation) because the Spanish monarchs Charles V and later his son, Philip II, used the classical style in some key buildings that they sponsored to emulate an idea of imperialism, perhaps reminiscent of the ancient Romans.

The case of El Escorial located close to Madrid in Spain is particularly outstanding. King Philip II set out to build a palace that would also be the burial vaults of his family lineage, the Habsburgs. The building contains an impressive and enormous library and also a monastery. The building uses a strict and sober classical vocabulary, evident in the simple and stark composition that uses the classical orders in a simple and straightforward manner, always employing heavy-looking columns, entablatures, and repetitive, symmetrical patterns in the distribution of voids and massing.  The influence of the northern territories of Flanders, then a part of the Habsburg’s empire, is seen in the characteristic sloped, dark slate-tiled roofs, and the pointed turrets at the building’s corners.

Knowledge of renaissance architectural classicism (or the “Roman style”) arrived in New Spain with educated Spaniards, like the first viceroy of the viceroyalty, Antonio de Mendoza, who brought many books from Spain with him and was well-read in many subjects, including architecture. Mendoza owned a copy of Italian renaissance humanist Leon Battista Alberti’s famous treatise on architecture called De re aedificatoria, written originally around 1450 in Italy and based on the treatise by the ancient Roman architect and engineer Vitrivius. De re aedificatoria was thoroughly dedicated to architecture, and discussions such as what made an architect, what were architecture’s classical rules on composition, how might an architect better design a building, among other topics.

Mendoza and his successor, Luis de Velasco, were also concerned with attracting European architects to New Spain to take on important building endeavors, such as cathedrals, city halls, hospitals, and other infrastructure works. The first Spanish architect trained in the classical tradition to arrive in New Spain was Claudio de Arciniega, who settled initially in Puebla. While there, Arciniega ornamented a public water fountain at the city’s main plaza, worked on the ornamentation of the city’salhóndiga (city public granary), and began working on Puebla’s new cathedral, until he was lured, after a couple of years, to Mexico City.

Other architects, like Francisco Becerra, Francisco Gutiérrez, and Pedro López Florín, also settled in Puebla in the latter part of the 16th century. Becerra is credited with designing the cathedral’s layout, an impressive edifice characterized by its classical ornamentation that has certain stylistic and formal parallels with Philip II’s El Escorial. One of the most important elements in Puebla’s cathedral, which is related to the classical tradition, is the building’s form, which is called a basilical plan. A basilica was a building type that harkened back to the ancient Romans. They used basilicas as public buildings where courts of law and other official affairs were conducted. The Christian tradition adopted the idea of a basilica as the notion of a large, religious building that was fit for congregating large amounts of people and carrying out processions throughout them. By the renaissance era, a basilica plan was a building model employed for important Christian religious buildings, notably for cathedrals, which had a series of ample corridors (called naves) separated by rows of columns. In Spain, many cathedrals had been built following this scheme, and Becerra adopted the basilical plan when designing Puebla’s cathedral. Relatedly, Alberti’s treatise included a model for designing a basilical building.

Becerra also had a hand in other important civic buildings, like the private residence of the Cathedral Chapter’s Dean, a cleric named Tomás de la Plaza. His residence, today known as Casa del Deán (The Dean’s House), is one of Puebla’s most relevant works of classical architecture from the 16th century.

Important religious buildings in Puebla from the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries, such as colleges, convents, or parish churches, were often designed in the classical canon. The main façade of the Santo Domingo convent is a good example of the appreciation the religious orders in this city had for classicism. The façade is severe and purist in its classicism, noted in the lack of ornamentation and adherence to the rules of classical composition of elements such as columns and architraves. The material, a dark grey basaltic stone, adds to the sense of sobriety.

Main façade of the Templo de Santo Domingo

Architectural treatises in Puebla

A significant number of architectural treatises in Puebla’s historical libraries demonstrate how individuals learned about knowledge of classical architecture in Puebla. The Palafoxiana Library and the Lafragua Library were both established in the late 16th century and have volumes by Vitruvius, Alberti, and Serlio.

The power that renaissance architectural treatises had as disseminators of visual messages was nowhere as powerful as in the Americas, where European colonizers encountered unimaginable expanses of territory that they set out to conquer and colonize. The colonization process undertaken by the Spanish in New Spain and elsewhere, involved the shaping of the built environment along colonial ideals, and classical architecture, in that sense, played a crucial role in cities like Puebla.

Classicism in the visual arts

The reception and popularization of the classical architectural language in Puebla is also observed in pictorial arts, such as paintings by Luis Lagarto. Born in Andalusia, Spain, Lagarto migrated to New Spain and was active in Mexico City and Puebla. He received a commission to illuminate the choir books for Puebla’s cathedral in 1600, spending more than a decade on this project. While he was in Puebla, he painted religious miniatures, including The Annunciation and Adoration of the Shepherds, both carried out sometime around 1610.

Both of these images display intricate architectural environments by the artist, who paid attention to carefully designed classical architectural backdrops. In The Annunciation, the Archangel Gabriel meets the Virgin Mary, while above them, a window into heaven opens with God and a cohort of angels watching the scene. All of this drama unfolds in an intricate and elegant architectural space, in which marble Corinthian columns are topped by a finely decorated frieze. Lagarto’s attention to classical architecture in this work is outstanding, and his depiction of entablatures, Corinthian pilasters, columns, a tiled marble floor, and a technically accomplished perspective reveal an undeniable visual proficiency regarding architectural classicism. The tendency to employ classical architectural backdrops would continue throughout the 17th century.

Reframing our understanding of the renaissance

The importance of classical architecture to Puebla’s 16th- and 17th-century colonial history helps to reframe our understanding of the renaissance as it has been traditionally understood—namely, as a northern Italian phenomenon whitewashed by notions such as the flowering of philosophy, education, and artistic innovation via an emphasis on individual agency and creativity. In the context of the Spanish colonial Americas, as we have seen with the case of Puebla, renaissance ideas and forms were part of a colonial endeavor that aided colonizers in implementing a cultural program that asserted their values over Indigenous ones. The concept of classical architecture and urbanism in Puebla was part of a broader colonial enterprise that urges a revised, expanded, or altogether redefined understanding of the renaissance.

Source: Dr. Juan Luis Burke, “Puebla de los Ángeles and the classical architectural tradition,” in Smarthistory, August 26, 2022, accessed July 23, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/puebla-and-the-classical-architectural-tradition/.

In the Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid, a small painting shows Saint Christopher presenting Christopher Columbus to the Virgin Mary and Christ child. Columbus wears a gold-braided waistcoat inscribed with the Spanish heraldic motto of “Plus Ultra” (“Further beyond”—a Latin phrase and the national motto of Spain) over an armored suit.[1] The Basilica Cathedral Santa María la Menor of Santo Domingo—recognizable by its double-arched doorway—dominates the background.

Two angels float above the Virgin and carry the insignia of the Dominican Order, calling to mind the name of the city, Santo Domingo (Saint Dominic in English), the capital of the Caribbean island that Columbus named La española (eventually Hispaniola), named in honor of Spain, which had financed Columbus, and which Taíno peoples called Ayiti or Kiskeya. Today the island contains two nations, Dominican Republic and Haiti.

One figure in the background of the painting might strike the viewer as out-of-place because he is dressed in a turban and tunic. Yet this “Moorish” dress was not uncommon in Spain, especially because Muslims had controlled most of the Iberian peninsula (today Spain and Portugal) for hundreds of years. What is less well known is that enslaved Black Moors (Muslim inhabitants of Iberia) had been in Hispaniola since at least 1550 despite a royal prohibition. A letter (dated 1550) from Santo Domingo officers to the crown asks the king to exempt the (at least) 100 enslaved Moors of Hispaniola from the 1543 royal prohibition because they performed various trades.[2] Under the watchful gaze of this turbaned figure, Columbus surrenders his helmet, gauntlets, and spear at the feet of the Virgin, offering her the first Christian city of the Americas.

This painting reveals the early European interest in picturing the so-called “New World” (many people were unable to travel to the Americas, but wanted to see what it looked like). The turbaned figure also stands as a reminder to peninsular viewers (or people living on the Iberian Peninsula) of threats to Christian dominance. The final Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula only fell to the Spanish Catholic Monarchs in 1492, followed by the expulsion of Muslims and Jews who refused conversion to Christianity. In the painting, the turbaned figure provides a justification for the colonization of the Americas.

It is possible the painter worked in Seville as part of the large picture-making industry dedicated to producing religious images (especially of the Virgin Mary) to aid in conversion in the Americas. The artist would not have seen Santo Domingo firsthand, but learned about it from images or written accounts. A letter Columbus sent announcing the news of the “discovery” included, in its different editions throughout Europe, several engravings depicting America and its inhabitants. Royal chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s Natural and General History of the Indies also introduced Europeans to the fauna, flora, and peoples of Hispaniola, which he had observed in person. His book included the first illustrations of the pineapple, the hammock, the barbecue, and tobacco.

A Blueprint for Colonization

The European invasion and colonization of the Americas was launched in 1492 from Hispaniola. For sixteen years, Hispaniola was Spain’s only active colony in the hemisphere, making the lessons learned on the island an important part of the playbook for colonizing elsewhere in the Americas. In 1493, Columbus and his crew arrived after the second voyage ready to establish a trading post in the style of Portuguese feitorias (factories), which were fortified, coastal trading houses that the Portuguese set up in west Africa to monopolize trade in gold and enslaved peoples. They served as warehouses and customs agencies mediating exchange between local trading networks and European monarchs. The second voyage also brought Franciscan missionaries who would begin the process of conversion; by 1500 they had baptized 3,000 Indigenous people.

La Isabela, the first European settlement of the Americas, was founded on January 6, 1494 in today’s Puerto Plata province (in northern Hispaniola), after the celebration of a mass during which Amerindians first saw a sculpture of the Virgin Mary in the context of Catholic liturgy. The experiment at La Isabela failed after four years because the all-male settlement suffered starvation, absences by Columbus who left to explore Cuba, indigenous resistance, and a mutiny led by Columbus’s former servant, Francisco Roldán.

A map of Santo Domingo show the city’s grid plan. The cathedral is the large building in the center of the grid. Giovanni Battista Boazio, View of Santo Domingo, 1589, hand-colored engraving, from Map and views illustrating Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian voyage, 1585–6, published in Leiden (Jay I. Kislak Collection Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress)

 

Before La Isabela failed, the Spanish monarchy had ordered the change of the site’s status from trade post to a fully imperial venture in a move to centralize power.[3] This change tells us that the Spanish monarchs wished to expand their empire. With a defined, imperial venture in mind, governor of the Indies Nicolás de Ovando arrived on the island with 2,500 colonists, and founded Santo Domingo proper in 1502 after moving it to the western banks of the Ozama river. He developed the city using a rectilinear grid known as a traza, which anchored church, elite residences, and government buildings around a main plaza, with streets meeting at right angles. This organization had several advantages including peripheral and internal surveillance, and possibilities for expansion. With its ideal proportions, the traza symbolized the idealized civility and order of classical Rome. The work of ancient Roman architect Vitruvius enjoyed a resurgence in fifteenth-century Europe, and Spaniards reproduced this classical architectural language in their own imperial pursuits. Before the Americas, they implemented the grid model to subjugate the Canary Islands, as well as in the military encampment of Santa Fe de Granada on the eve of the final battle to recapture Spain from Muslim control.  Another source for urban planning in the early Spanish Americas was the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of Heavenly Jerusalem which offered the Spanish crown the opportunity to promote Santo Domingo as the heavenly city, thus raising its political and religious stature.

The Cathedral Basilica of Santo Domingo was important to the city’s early urban development—it was the center of city life. Construction of the Cathedral began in 1514 (possibly 1523) and finished in the 1540s, well after the city’s residents had begun to emigrate to newly conquered territories. The coral limestone façade featured a pediment and portico—elements borrowed from classical architecture), and prominently displayed the shield of Habsburg Emperor Charles V. Ornamented tabernacles, flanking the double-arched entranceway, houses statues of the apostles, evoking the Spanish empire’s evangelizing mission. This classicizing language fits with other urban elements in the city, such as the traza (the grid structure). 

Virgen de la Antigua in Santo Domingo Cathedral

Early colonial artworks found inside the Cathedral speak to the transatlantic crossings of popular Iberian religious images and devotions. In his book, Oviedo, the Royal chronicler, writes,

“a large image of our Lady of Antigua, today in the main church of this city in the altar next to the sacristy, copied from the image of Antigua in the main church of Seville.”[4]

According to Oviedo, the painting was placed in the Cathedral of Santo Domingo in 1523 after captain Francisco Vara (from Seville) found it floating in the Caribbean ocean, the only object retrieved from his vessel’s shipwreck.

This painting is likely one that hangs in the Santo Domingo Cathedral today, displayed on the left side of the main entrance. It features a standing Virgin, carrying the Christ child with her left arm and a flower in her right hand. Two angels hover above her head holding her crown, and two unidentified donors appear below.[5] Diagonally across from this painting, on the right side of the presbytery, another Virgen de la Antigua painting with similar iconography can be seen, except that the donors pictured in the lower segment are the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabel.[6]

The Virgen de la Antigua was a popular form of the Virgin Mary in Spain, and stories circulated of her miraculous intervention on behalf of Christian kingdoms during the Reconquest. In one of the decisive battles in the 13th century, the image of the Virgen de la Antigua allegedly appeared in a vision to Fernando III of Castile as a mural painting inside a mosque in Seville, signaling an imminent victory against Muslim forces. Her image eventually traveled to the Americas as part of Europe’s colonial expansion in the 16th century. Devotion to her inspired votive offerings thanking or petitioning the Virgin for a safe passage, such as we see in the two paintings in the Cathedral today. Devotees also visited the image in the cathedral to implore her protection against storms and catastrophes as people coped with the unpredictability of nature.

In this early period, a great deal of art was produced in Spain for shipment to Hispaniola. Much of it was religious, made for Christian liturgical and devotional purposes. Still, there would have also been secular portraiture, sumptuous textiles, and other movable objects (like furniture) that marked the owner’s social standing. While commercial painters in Seville produced many of the works that arrived during the early colonial period, some were made by more prominent artists and their workshops, such as Alejo Fernández and Juan Martínez Montañes. Much of this early art no longer survives unfortunately. Owners emigrated with their art, storms destroyed work, and the Francis Drake’s sacking of Santo Domingo in 1586 led to the disappearance of some early colonial art as well.

Reception of Images 

Art that arrived in Hispaniola aboard the first Spanish fleets forced a reckoning between cultures that did not understand or use images in the same way. In one infamous encounter, Taínos seized an image of the Virgin from an oratory, buried it in a field, and urinated on it. Seeing the incident as an insult, Columbus’s brother ordered the natives burned alive. Catalonian Hieronymite friar Ramón Pané recounts this story in the opening of his ethnographic report, An Account of the Antiquities of the Indies (completed in 1498), to suggest Taíno idolatry.[7] For the Taíno however, the venerated image could fertilize the ground just like a zemi (sculptures of wood, stone, or clay, that sheltered deities or ancestral beings). Art historian Amara Solari suggests that Taíno believed that the Marian icon embodied precontact numinous (supernatural or holy) qualities, allowing them to transpose the zemi and Christian icon.

False starts like these, the persecution of so-called idolatry, and the near genocide of the Taíno within the first fifty years of European arrival (due to diseases and cruel labor practices), doomed the potential development of transcultural aesthetics (the merging of cultural elements into a completely new iteration) during the early colonial period. Still, one surviving zemi (called the Pigorini zemi) hints at the ways different cultures and visual systems converged during the early colonial era. Its mix of African rhinoceros horn and European glass beads demonstrate the different cultures, artistic practices, and materials that convened in Hispaniola.

Political, religious, and social indoctrination via Christian images was a strategy deployed by conquistadors and clerics since the early days of contact. Due to language barriers, images became important teaching aids in Spain’s missionary enterprise. An engraving by Diego de Valadés in Rhetorica Christiana (Christian Rhetoric) shows a Franciscan friar in New Spain preaching on a pulpit to a crowded assembly of natives. He points to the lienzos (painted cloths) with a stick, showing how images were useful for religious conversion.

Archaeological material can help us learn about the use of images and spaces for instruction and religious conversion in Hispaniola. A fragment of a small wooden sculpture of Christ found in San Rafael Cave in Santo Domingo is a type of religious prop employed in this exchange. Chapels or private oratories (small chapels for private worship) in the estates of encomenderoscould have also functioned as early conversion sites after the Laws of Burgos of 1512 ordered that Spaniards build churches within their haciendas and display images to instruct the Taíno.

Hispaniola was the first point of long-term contact between the cultures of Europe, America, and Africa. The visual and material culture, such as paintings of Marian miracles, helped people stake territorial and identity claims. More research is needed to bring to light the production and reception of art by Amerindians, Africans, and mixed-race peoples, as well as to fully illuminate the implications of early Hispaniola’s role in subsequent colonial schemes.

One of the earliest representations of the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe, today patroness of the Americas and an important symbol of Mexican national and religious identity, is an engraving printed in 1608. The engraving depicts the Virgin of Guadalupe at the top of the page, seemingly hovering above an altar. Candles and hanging lamps illuminate her while ex-votos shaped like body parts testify to her powers of intercession.

The borders of the print incorporate small scenes narrating miracles of the Virgin, each with its own minuscule descriptive text. Prints like this one, produced in multiples by inking an engraved copperplate and then running it through a roller press so that the ink transferred from its surface onto the paper sheet, allowed for wide diffusion of an image. They became important vehicles for the promotion of religious devotions, but also for the propagation of political propaganda and for the transmission of news and scientific knowledge.

A printed indulgence

The 1608 engraving of the Virgin of Guadalupe was cut by Samuel Stradanus, one of the most important early Mexican engravers who was originally from northern Europe. He even signed it “Samuel Stradanus Excudit” (published by Samuel Stradanus). The print served as an indulgence certificate issued by Mexican Archbishop Juan Pérez de la Serna. The money raised from the sale of the indulgences was used to finance the construction of the new sanctuary of Tepeyac (where the Virgin of Guadalupe first miraculously appeared, just north of Mexico City), which was consecrated in 1622.

The printed indulgence provides testimony to the early material culture surrounding devotion to the Marian advocation. Purchasers of the indulgences received a printed image that they could keep for their own use, perhaps displaying it in their homes or place of work. Prints like this one might then become objects of prayer themselves, or even used to enact miraculous cures. The faithful lit candles before devotional prints like this one, pressed them to injured body parts, and carried them on their persons for protection.

Mexico City was the first and most important center for printing in Spanish colonial Latin America, publishing far more books and printed images than any other city in Spain’s American dominions. The first typographic press was established in Mexico City in 1539, and 73 engravers are known to have worked in Mexico City over the course of the colonial period in New Spain. During this period, prints served the needs of both the church and laity in the region, promoting state and Church orthodoxy but were also manipulated by printers to meet a devout market that did not always adhere to official conventions.

The Inquisition and Mexican prints

Religious orthodoxy was critical during this period of the Counter Reformation, and was enforced by the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Mexico City. Some Mexican Inquisition cases reveal the varied and complex ways in which inhabitants of the city engaged with these prints [1]. Many of the Inquisition cases involving prints centered on faulty inscriptions associated with those printed images. These cases reveal the complex ways in which religious prints in particular might be produced, circulated, and engaged with by viewers. For example, in 1572, Juan Ortiz, a blockcutter who produced carved woodblocks for impression, appeared before the Inquisition under suspicion of Lutheranism. He had cut a block of the Virgin of Rosary that then appeared printed alongside an inscription promising “perpetual grace” to its purchasers. The Inquisitors condemned the inscription and expelled Ortiz from the Americas, arguing he had added the text for financial rather than devotional reasons. Printed images that promised spiritual benefits to their owners demonstrate the intertwined nature of devotional and financial motives: prints claiming to have greater spiritual power might sell better on the market.

In another instance, in 1690, the Inquisition investigated prints available for sale in the town of Puebla depicting Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza and the nun Catalina de San Juan (known as the “china poblana”), both popular holy figures. Both Catalina de San Juan and Bishop Palafox were uncanonized and thus not officially recognized by the Catholic Church as sanctioned subjects of devotion. The prints violated the Church’s prohibitions against devotion to unapproved figures. They also demonstrate the power of popular piety and the ability of prints to promote this kind of devotion. In response to these prints, the inquisition released an edict reiterating the prior prohibitions on images of the two figures.

Mexican printmaking and the Academy of San Carlos

One of the key factors that distinguishes New Spanish printmaking from printmaking in other parts of the Spanish Americas is the 1783 foundation of the Royal Academy of the Three Noble Arts of San Carlos, the first art academy in the Americas. The Spanish engraver Jerónimo Antonio Gil came to New Spain in 1778 to serve as the chief engraver to the Royal Mint. He initially established an engraving school at the mint before eventually founding the Royal Academy of San Carlos, where he also taught engraving and trained students in the Neoclassical style, popular at the time in Europe. He would serve as the Academy’s director general until his death.

Gil and his academy introduced a new kind of artistic training and production to New Spain—one grounded in Enlightenment ideas of good taste and careful study of prototypes from Greco-Roman antiquity as well as of the life model. Engravings produced by academy artists employed a precise linear syntax to reproduce works of art made in other media, such as painting. Their works used linear perspective to convey buildings and illusionistic spaces, and demonstrate a strong knowledge of human anatomy and the use of light and dark to model forms. They also exhibit a new aesthetic of clean lines, reduction of Baroque ornament, and influence of Greco-Roman architecture and idealized representations of the human body. Gil’s influence can be seen in the engravings produced by his disciples as well as in the work of artists who emerged from the Academy [2].

We have two portraits of Gil, a 1796 painting by Mexican artist Rafael Ximeno y Planes and a 1793 engraving by Fernando Selma (Gil’s son-in-law) after Tomás Suria. In both, Gil is recognized for his central role in founding the Academy and portrayed as a gentleman of the Enlightenment. Selma’s engraving shows Gil gazing forthrightly out at the viewer, and he wears a fashionable wig and coat.

The text below his portrait declares Gil the Director General of the Academy and gives the reason for the production of the portrait as “The Academy [presents this portrait] in recognition of his merit” (La Academia en consideracion â su merito). Prints of important personages were frequently produced to adorn texts in their honor or for distribution to the public. Gil himself engraved numerous portraits of Mexican luminaries.

One of Gil’s students, José María Montes de Oca, merits special mention for a book he self-published in 1801 immediately after leaving the Academy. The book, Life of Saint Philip of Jesus, protomartyr of Japan and Patron of His Home Nation of Mexico (Vida de San Felipe de Jesus Protomartir del Japon y Patron de su Patria Mexico), is exceptional in the whole of colonial printmaking in that it consists entirely of full-page etched illustrations without typeset text. Furthermore, all thirty etchings were designed and executed by Montes de Oca himself.

Montes de Oca names himself as not only the artist but the “inventor” of the images, which narrate the life of Felipe de Jesús, a sixteenth-century martyr who had been born in Mexico but died in Japan. In naming himself “inventor,” Montes de Oca defined himself as the creator of the iconography and compositions, not simply the producer of the plates.

In the best-known image from Montes de Oca’s text, Felipe de Jesus stands in glory on the back of an eagle that has perched, a snake in its beak and wings spread, on a nopal cactus, while allegorical representations of Mexico and Spain kneel before him. Felipe de Jesús opens his arms as if to embrace these allegorical figures from afar. Prints like Montes de Oca’s Felipe de Jesús series allowed for the repetition and broad circulation of images of potential saints, promoting familiarity with their remarkable deeds and admirable virtues and thus encouraging the development of devotion to them.

Why prints mattered

Printed images produced in colonial New Spain allowed for the circulation of local religious imagery and promotion of such diverse figures as the Virgin of Guadalupe and Felipe de Jesús, and the controversial Bishop Palafox and Catalina de San Juan. In the eighteenth century, with the arrival of Jéronimo Antonio Gil and the establishment of the Royal Academy of San Carlos, engraving became an important medium for promotion of new styles and modes of taste. Throughout the colonial period, this ephemeral, multiple, and reproductive medium allowed for the wide circulation of images and their corresponding ideas to a broad public, creating a shared religious and political culture.

Source:  Dr. Emily Floyd, “Prints and Printmakers in Colonial New Spain,” in Smarthistory, June 2, 2020, accessed July 13, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/prints-and-printmakers-in-colonial-new-spain/.

Portraits, furniture, silver, textiles, folding screens, metal basins, devotional objects, and ceramics. These are among the many types of objects commissioned or purchased by elites in the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain. While the Church was the most important patron of the arts in New Spain, it was not the only patron of luxurious artworks. Colonial aristocrats, such as peninsulares (Spaniards born in Spain) or criollos (Spaniards born in the viceroyalties), worked as viceregal officials, merchants, or plantation owners. The artworks decorating their homes showcased their wealth and status in viceregal society. While these were initially imported from abroad, local artists eventually created them at home—as in the case of the biombo, a folding screen traditionally used in Asia.

Biombos

The biombo became a common feature of aristocratic households in colonial Mexico. An example of a seventeenth-century double-sided biombo by the renowned Afro-Mexican painter Juan Correa depicts a historical narrative on one side, and an allegorical one on the other. The Encounter of Cortés and Moctezuma II, painted across ten panels, depicts the fateful encounter between the Mexica (more commonly known as the Aztecs) and Spaniards. At right, Cortés enters on horseback, while Moctezuma sits under a canopy as his attendants carry him.

The rank of both men is communicated through their position in the composition, as well as through dress. Cortés wears rich fabrics and a feathered helmet, while Moctezuma II wears an elaborate crown and holds a scepter. Correa depicts both men as equals, despite the inherent inequality and brutality of the Spanish conquest. Different from scenes depicted in some sixteenth-century codices, like the Toxcatl Massacre from Diego Durán’s Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e islas de la tierra firme (1579), Correa depicts a somewhat positive view of this encounter.

On the other side of the biombo is a depiction of the allegorical representations of Africa, Asia, America, and Europe. Correa draws particular attention to the continents of Asia and Europe, placed prominently at center and flanked by Africa at right and America at left. In using the identifiable portraits of the Spanish King Charles II and his first wife, Marie Louise of Orleans, dressed with the French royal fleur-de-lis (to represent Europe), Correa singles out this continent from the other parts of the world.

Charles II turns his back on America and points his toes towards the text at bottom, which reads “Europa.” This gesture alludes to how Charles II “has triumphed over America,” and as a result, he can now gaze confidently and “with desire toward Asia and Africa.” [1] If this is the case, then the biombo depicts somewhat contradictory stories. The Encounter of Cortés and Moctezuma II focuses on equality and autonomy, but The Four Parts of the World showcases Europe’s global aspirations, an image that is more in line with the imperialist behavior of the period—and indeed with the colonization of Mexico.

Ceramics

Mexican nobility also decorated their homes with ceramics. These could be made locally or imported from Asia, Europe, or the viceroyalty of Peru. The importation of Chinese porcelain and Dutch delftware created a demand for blue-and-white ceramics, and a local tradition emerged in New Spain. The city of Puebla de los Ángeles, the second largest city of the viceroyalty, specialized in this type of ware, known as talavera poblana (Spanish for “poblano earthenware”). Talavera poblana creates this color combination through a technique known as tin glazing. The tin-covered surfaces of vessels take on a white glossy appearance when fired. The blue decorative patterns that make up the landscape and other imagery are also painted with metal oxides that turn blue when fired.

In Spain, and throughout Europe, aristocrats coveted another type of earthenware, known for its distinctive aroma and supposed medicinal qualities. These ceramic vessels, known as búcaros de Indias, originated in Mexico, and indeed one can be seen in Velázquez’s famous Las Meninas(on a tray being offered to the young infanta), a reflection of the transatlantic nature of the global art trade during Spanish colonialism.

Casta paintings

Local artistic production in the form of biombos, talavera poblana, enconchados, and casta paintings were also popular Spanish exports. Casta paintings consisted of multiple canvases that documented the phenomenon of racial mixing in New Spain, while at the same time ranking each casta (Spanish for “caste”) into a particular hierarchy.The purpose of these casta paintings is not entirely known. It is also unclear the extent to which they accurately depict colonial reality, but they nevertheless reveal an important insight into the crafting of identity through race in the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

Casta paintings tried to document and categorize what the eighteenth-century Archbishop of Mexico, Francisco Antonio Lorenzana, identified as a complex phenomenon. He explained in 1770: “Two worlds God has placed in the hands of our Catholic Monarch, and the New does not resemble the Old, not in its climate, its customs, or its inhabitants. . . . In the Old Spain only a single caste of men is recognized, in the New many and different.” [2] Spanish colonizers felt the need to document this racial diversity in New Spain, and initiated the tradition of casta painting as a way to understand this phenomenon. This was in line with the Enlightenment’s penchant for cataloguing information and fondness for encyclopedic knowledge.

Portraits

Painted portraits became increasingly popular in New Spain, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Portraits such as Portrait of a Lady by Miguel de Herrera captured colonial aristocrats in the most favorable of conditions. Whether these paintings hung in private residences or public buildings their intent was to showcase to others the social standing, public service, family ancestry, or even the purity of the sitter (as in Portrait of a Lady). In emphasizing the delicate lace of her sleeves, the elaborate plumes and diamond ornaments on her hair, and the heavy jewelry that rests on her ears and around her neck, Herrera captures the elite status of the sitter. This is similar to how artists of casta paintings, such as Juan Rodríguez Juárez, communicate social rank through race, gender, dress, and accessories. The closed fan, which she holds prominently with her right hand, is not only a fashionable accessory, but also as an indicator of her virginity. It also points in the direction of her watch, a common symbol of mortality.

While portraits shed light on the racial and social relations in colonial Mexico, Portrait of a Lady changes the context of portraiture entirely, not only because the painting functions independently (not as part of a series), but also because the woman is depicted as an individual rather than a type (as in casta paintings). Additionally, the portrait depicts the woman with a distinct sense of agency and autonomy, which is in direct opposition with the depiction of types in casta paintings. The painting was most likely commissioned by her and therefore exhibited in the privacy of her home. Casta paintings, on the other hand, served an entirely different purpose in Spain, where they were considered quasi-documentary proof of the exotic people, costumes, and fruits of the colonies.

Nun portraits

A distinct and original genre of portraiture in New Spain are crowned nuns (monjas coronadas), which became recognizable manifestations of the viceroyalty’s tendency for exuberance in religious matters. These portraits were painted to commemorate nuns’ admissions into the convents (and in some cases, their deaths). The extravagant crowns that characterized these portraits represented the wearer’s historical importance within the context of their indissoluble marriage to God and the Church.

These portraits displayed another typically New Spanish nun accessory, the nun’s shield (escudo de monja), a kind of badge that was worn as part of their habit. These shields were round medallions portraying devotional images chosen for their affinity to the wearer. Following particular formulaic conventions, the most important painters of New Spain contributed in making these profession portraits a very original form of artistic production. These portraits were often commissioned by the nuns’ families, who would display them proudly in their elite homes.

Together, these portraits—whether of castas, aristocrats, or nuns—demonstrate the currency of social portraiture in New Spain, and the importance of capturing religious and material wealth, and establishing racial and gender hierarchies.

See also:

Learn about New Spain

Read more about the Brooklyn Biombo

Read about the Biombo with the Conquest of Mexico and View of Mexico City

Read more about Crowned Nun Portrait of Sor María de Guadalupe

Read about the large market (called the Parián) in the Plaza Mayor (or Zócalo) of Mexico City

Source: Dr. Maya Jiménez, “Elite secular art in New Spain,” in Smarthistory, January 26, 2021, accessed July 13, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/elite-secular-art-new-spain/.