ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a detailed analysis of one painting by Bernardo Bitti in order to highlight how the artist may have considered those reforms. Consequently, Christianity was a critical part of colonial culture from the very beginning, and since language barriers made communication challenging early on and illiteracy remained high throughout the colonial period, art was an invaluable tool to missionaries, developing alongside tactics of conversion. It discusses the Mannerist qualities of Bitti's paintings, always referring to the formal characteristics of this much debated and quite complicated period or style of art in Italy. The Council of Trent held its last meeting in 1563, during which the bishops discussed the issue of images, although briefly, leaving much of the dissemination of its dictates to local authorities, and as it turned out, to those who wrote treatises and responses to the necessary reform.
