ABSTRACT
Casta paintings—visual depictions of intercultural mixing—were an artistic genre native to Latin America that emerged during the eighteenth century. Little is known about who commissioned them, but it is clear that they were intended for a predominantly Spanish audience, both criollo and peninsular; most of the works have resurfaced in Spain. They typically comprised sixteen scenes that recorded the intermixing of Spanish, Indian, and African blood. Casta paintings exemplify one of the central dilemmas that Spaniards in colonial Mexico confronted: racial anxiety about their inferior status vis-a-vis peninsular Spaniards, and at the same time pride in the distinctiveness that their connections to the bounteous New World conferred upon them. These tensions were exacerbated by the growth in the size of New Spain’s casta population in this era and its increased social mobility.
