page_title: Latin American art
section_title: Colonial period
hierarchical_section_title: Latin American art / Colonial period
context_page_description: Latin American art is the combined artistic expression of South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico, as well as Latin Americans living in other regions.
  The art has roots in the many different indigenous cultures that inhabited the Americas before European colonization in the 16th century. The indigenous cultures each developed sophisticated artistic disciplines, which were highly influenced by religious and spiritual concerns. Their work is collectively known and referred to as Pre-columbian art. The blending of Native American, African and European cultures has resulted in a unique mestizo tradition.
context_section_description: During the colonial period, a mixture of indigenous traditions and European influences (mainly due to the Christian teachings of Franciscan, Augustinian and Dominican friars) produced a very particular Christian art known as Indochristian art. In addition to indigenous art, the development of Latin American visual art was significantly influenced by Spanish, Portuguese,  and French and Dutch Baroque painting. In turn Baroque painting was often influenced by the Italian masters.
  Gillis van van Schendel (ca. 1635–1678/9) the younger. sign. active 17 Jh. 
  Brasilianische Gebirgslandschaft mit Bergziege und Gebirgsbach (Brazilian Landscape with goats, a waterfall and a palmtree)
  (The scene may be a view of the waterfalls in the virgin forests in Teresópolis which runs through the Parquequer river, near Recife, Brasil) " aside from the well-known artists, other painters, draughtsman and engravers must have been gravitating toward this most interesting and stimulating little Court. They were doubtless entranced by the grat adventure, by the opportunity to interpret exotic themes, either on the spot or after sketches made in these foreign parts and vicariously used after their return a patria "
  (Lit.: Some seventeen-century paintings of Brazil," The Connoisseur, October 1970, page. 130) oil on canvas., 119 x 99 cm
  The Cuzco School is viewed as the first center of European-style painting in the Americas. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Spanish art instructors taught Quechua artists to paint religious imagery based on classical and Renaissance styles.
  In eighteenth-century New Spain, Mexican artists along with a few Spanish artists produced paintings of a system of racial hierarchy, known as casta paintings. It was almost exclusively a Mexican form however, one set was produced in Peru. In a break from religious paintings of the preceding centuries, casta paintings were a secular art form. Only one known casta painting by a relatively unknown painter, Luis de Mena, combines castas with Mexico's Virgin of Guadalupe; this being an exception. Some of Mexico's most distinguished artists painted casta works, including Miguel Cabrera. Most casta paintings were on multiple canvases, with one family grouping on each. There were a handful of single canvas paintings, showing the entire racial hierarchy. The paintings show idealized family groupings, with the father being of one racial, the mother of another racial category, and their offspring being a third racial category. This genre of painting flourished for about a century, coming to an end with Mexican independence in 1821, and the abolition of legal racial categories.
  In the seventeenth century, The Netherlands had captured the rich sugar-producing area of the Portuguese colony of Brazil (1630–1654). During that period, Dutch artist Albert Eckhout painted a number of important depictions of social types in Brazil. These depictions included images of indigenous men and women, as well as still lifes.
  Scientific expeditions approved by the Spanish crown began exploring Spanish America where its flora and fauna were recorded. Spaniard José Celestino Mutis, a medical doctor and horticulturalist and follower of Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus, led an expedition starting in 1784 to northern South America, the expedition is known as the Expedición Botánica de Nueva Granada. Local artists were Ecuadorean Indians, who produced five thousand color drawings of nature, all being published. The crown chartered expedition whose purpose was scientific recording of the natural beauty and wealth of Nature, was a departure from the long traditional religious art.
  The most important scientific expedition was that of Alexander von Humboldt and French botantist Aimé Bonpland. They traveled for five years throughout Spanish America (1799-1804), exploring and recording scientific information as well as the attire and lifestyles local populations.  Humboldt's work became an inspiration and template for continuing scientific work in the nineteenth century, as well as traveller reporters who recorded the scenes
caption: Single canvas depiction of the casta system of racial hierarchy in eighteenth-century Mexico, by Ignacio María Barreda. Most sets of casta paintings were individual canvases showing only one family.
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