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Art of the Americas to World War I
Course: Art of the Americas to World War I > Unit 4
Lesson 2: Viceroyalty of New Spain- An introduction to New Spain
- Hispaniola’s early colonial art, an introduction
- Prints and Printmakers in Colonial New Spain
- The Bug That Had the World Seeing Red
- The Medici collect the Americas
- Virgin of Guadalupe
- Virgin of Guadalupe
- Defensive saints and angels in the Spanish Americas
- Elite secular art in New Spain
- Classical Architecture in Viceregal Mexico
- Hearst Chalice
- Puebla de los Ángeles and the classical architectural tradition
- La Casa del Deán in Puebla
- Mission churches as theaters of conversion in New Spain
- St. Michael the Archangel in Huejotzingo
- The convento of Acolman
- Murals from New Spain, San Agustín de Acolman
- Atrial Cross, convento San Agustín de Acolman, mid-16th century
- Atrial Cross at Acolman
- The Codex Huexotzinco
- Miguel González, The Virgin of Guadalupe
- Frontispiece of the Codex Mendoza
- Images of Africans in the Codex Telleriano Remensis and Codex Azcatitlan
- The Convento of San Nicolás de Tolentino, Actopan, Hidalgo
- Bernardino de Sahagún and collaborators, Florentine Codex
- Remembering the Toxcatl Massacre: The Beginning of the End of Aztec Supremacy
- Featherworks: The Mass of St. Gregory
- A Renaissance miniature in wood and feathers
- A shimmering saint, St. John in featherwork
- “Burning of the Idols,” in Diego Muñoz Camargo’s Description of the City and Province of Tlaxcala
- Map of Cholula, from the relaciones geográficas
- Engravings in Diego de Valadés’s Rhetorica Christiana
- The manuscripts of Luis de Carvajal
- Baltasar de Echave Ibía, The Hermits
- Mission Church, San Esteban del Rey, Acoma Pueblo
- Sebastián López de Arteaga, Marriage of the Virgin
- Cristóbal de Villalpando, View of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City
- Talavera poblana
- Biombo with the Conquest of Mexico and View of Mexico City
- Screen with the Siege of Belgrade and Hunting Scene (Brooklyn Biombo)
- Screen with the Siege of Belgrade and Hunting Scene (or Brooklyn Biombo)
- The Virgin of the Macana and the Pueblo Revolution of 1680
- Miguel de Herrera, Portrait of a Lady
- José Campeche, the portraitist of 18th-century Puerto Rico
- José Campeche y Jordán, Portrait of Governor Ramón de Castro
- José Campeche, Exvoto de la Sagrada Familia
- Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz, Christ Consoled by Angels
- Mission San Antonio de Valero & the Alamo
- Nativity group, from Guatemala
- Jerónimo de Balbás, Altar of the Kings (Altar de los Reyes)
- Miguel Cabrera, Virgin of the Apocalypse
- Cabrera, Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
- Casta paintings: constructing identity in Spanish colonial America
- Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo, attributed to Juan Rodriguez
- Church of Santa Prisca and San Sebastian, Taxco, Mexico
- Crowned nun portraits, an introduction
- Crowned Nun Portrait of Sor María de Guadalupe
- Escudos de monjas, or nuns’ badges, in New Spain
- Christ Crucified, a Hispano-Philippine ivory
- Saintly violence? Santiago in the Americas
- What does the music of heaven sound like?— St Cecilia in New Spain
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Casta paintings: constructing identity in Spanish colonial America
These challenging paintings visually separate indigenous Americans from the Spanish elite; most were exported. See learning resources here.
Francisco Clapera, Set of Sixteen Casta paintings, c. 1775, 51.1 x 39.6 cm (Denver Art Museum). Speakers: Sabina Kull, Meyer Center Fellow, Denver Art Museum and Beth Harris.
Francisco Clapera, Set of Sixteen Casta paintings, c. 1775, 51.1 x 39.6 cm (Denver Art Museum). Speakers: Sabina Kull, Meyer Center Fellow, Denver Art Museum and Beth Harris.
Want to join the conversation?
- Apart from the subject matter of the casta paintings, how did the very style of painting: applying paint to canvas; dealing with representational forms; etc. differ from techniques and materials used by painters in Europe at the time?(6 votes)
- Do we know if these paintings come together to make a larger story, or are they all just smaller stories that all have the common thread of racial intermixing?
also is there a place where I can read the plaques in English?(4 votes)- Spanish Colonial America stretched from Hispanola to the Galapagos, and from Tierra Del Fuego into what is not Oregon. That's a big area from which to tell one larger story. I think your surrestion of "smaller stories that all have a common thread..." is on the mark. With so many different instances of a similar phenomenon across such a large area, you can make up your own story.(1 vote)
- Okay,so we can mix DNA but i what i don't get it is that the child is all DNA of the dad,but there was a mom too,so is that child all black skin like the dad,eyes like the dad,that was a kinda silly for the mom.(1 vote)
- You have misunderstood about DNA and genetics. You should watch this Video on Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/high-school-biology/hs-molecular-genetics/hs-discovery-and-structure-of-dna/v/leading-and-lagging-strands-in-dna-replication(1 vote)
Video transcript
(gentle music) - We are here in the Denver Art Museum, looking at a set of Casta
paintings by an artist named Francisco Clapara. It's the only complete
set of Casta paintings in the United States. There are normally 16,
but today in the galleries only 14 are up. Two are being incorporated
into the work of a contemporary Latino artists. It shows the interest in
these paintings by artists and by the public. These are fascinating images to us today. So let's talk about what we're seeing. What we're looking at
is a series of images that describe what was seen
as racial mixing in new Spain. - They were produced in Mexico, which was a colony or
Vice Royalty of Spain, ruled by a Vice Roy, who was a stand in for the Spanish king. - So we have to remember that in new Spain there were Spanish people
who were born in the America. They were Spanish people
emigrated to the Americas and there were indigenous people, but there were also
Africans who were brought to new Spain as slaves. And there was a hierarchy, people who were Spanish born or creole, we're at the top of that hierarchy. They've had many more economic and educational opportunities. Then at the bottom of that hierarchy, they intermarried. They had children and
there was a racial mixing that cause anxiety. - In the Spanish colonies in America, there was more of an ability
for the lesser nobility for even people of the lower classes to change their position, to redefine themselves as higher class. And in part, this probably caused anxiety for the Spaniards and the Creoles. And it seems like the Casta
Paintings are in part, a way to codify these racial groups. - Typically for Costa paintings, we see a label at the bottom that explains what we're seeing. - In this first painting, the inscription tells us, (foreign language) which
means from a Spanish father and an Indian woman comes a Mestisa child. - And we can tell he's Spanish
by his European clothing, that three part hat, in fact he looks like an official of some sort. So we're looking at a
member of the Spanish elite. And similarly we can tell from the woman that she's indigenous by her clothing. - In this painting, you can see
that there's various fruits, that were native to the Americas. For instance, there's pineapple and it
looks like perhaps Papaya and then in the second
painting, we have a Spanish man, and a Castisa woman, and
their child then is Spanish. As we move through the series, people are depicted in
occupations, they're working, there's less leisure activities although, things vary from set to set, - So laborers are associated
with people lower down in that hierarchy people have
more mixed race so to speak. - Race was a fluid category. It wasn't necessarily as
strict as these Casta Paintings depict it to be. From what we know, many if
not most Casta Paintings were produced for export for Spain, for Spanish as well as
broader European viewers. And there's evidence that the
first set of Casta Paintings, produced in 1711, might've been commissioned
for the Vice Roy of new Spain and most likely he would have brought that set of Casta paintings, back to Spain with him when he returned. - So we have to ask what
was their motivation in commissioning these? - On the one hand, out of the Casta Paintings
showing these products of the Americas in these commodities, they're depicting new Spain as this land of boundless natural wonders. And so in that sense, they do seem to be
showing a sense of pride that the residents of new Spain, including the Creoles may
have had for their home. On the other hand, Spanish viewers also might
be seen more exotic depiction of new Spain. - So we see, for example, a woman who's making Tortias, we see someone making Tamales, we see Moley and meat being prepared. So this interests in the
exotic food, of new Spain. - And we also see new Spain, this crossroads between Asia
and Spain and particularly the painting number 14. Where we see this blue
and white porcelain, that was potentially made
in Asia and then traveled on the Manila and galleons
through new Spain. - So the bounty of new Spain, through the fruits and vegetables, the productivity of the people
of new Spain in the things that they labor to produce, we have a sense of harmony, and for the most part
in family relationships. We know that Clapara was
born in Spain and he was a member of the art
academy in Madrid and then was involved in the art
academy in Mexico City. And more recent research is indicating that the genre of Casta painting, it might have been developed
by painters in Mexico City who are involved with a
bid to elevate the status of painting as well as their
own professional status. - And we should say too, that these paintings are being
discussed by art historians. We're still working on researching them and interpreting them. And so it's interesting to think about what we might learn
about them in the future. (gentle music)