Retratar el mestizaje: las series de castas en la América del siglo XVIII

The Casa Lope de Vega hosts from 8 October to 8 December an exhibition that brings the public closer to casta painting, one of the most original genres developed in colonial America during the eighteenth century, focused on the depiction of the mestizaje of its society.

Viceregal painting in America was closely linked to Spanish and European painting from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, although it also developed its own themes and techniques. Among them stands out the so-called “casta painting”, which emerged mainly in the viceroyalty of New Spain, although examples from the viceroyalty of Peru also survive.

These works represent the mestizaje of American society based on its three main groups: Spanish, Indigenous and Black. The most common model consists of series of portraits of couples accompanied by the offspring of their union. The paintings also offer numerous details about clothing, jewellery, trades, leisure moments, landscapes or the interiors of homes, becoming a window onto the colonial society of the time.

The exhibition, curated by art historian Carmen Rodríguez de Tembleque, brings together a selection of representative pieces from the Museo de América and the Real Academia Española. The works offer an insight into a richness and diversity that also found reflection in the literary output of Lope de Vega, several of whose works feature American inhabitants and settings.