The Patricia and Philip Forst Art Museum (visit 4)

 

De Espanol e India, Mestizo

( From Spanish and India, Mestizo)

Mexico, ca. 1725

Jose de Ibrra (attr.)

Guadalajara, New Spin,1685-1756

Oil on canvas

43 x 71 1/2

Museum of the Americas, Madrid

 

During the Spanish Colonial period, a complex system, called castas, was used to describe the many racial categories of people in Spain's exotic possessions far across the world. The Casta painting are unigue  genre of American art produced in the Viceroyalty of New Spain ( Mexico) that documents racial combinations. Produced in series, usually consisting of 16 paintings to describe the many new mixes, they also served to illustrate where each person ranked in the new socio/ political system. Commissioned for European audience fascinated by the unusual in the eighteen and nineteenth centuries, many of these sets still exist and serve to reveal the colonial order of the time. This work, attributed to Jose de Ibarra describes the combination of Spanish and Indian to produce a Metizo child