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

An exhibition devoted to casta painting, a genre of viceregal America in the eighteenth century that portrays the mixing of its society through series of couples and their descendants.

Casa Museo Lope de Vega hosts this exhibition on casta painting, a genre specific to viceregal America in the eighteenth century that developed mainly in New Spain, although examples from the Viceroyalty of Peru are also preserved. The works depict the mixing of the three groups that made up society at the time: Spanish, Indigenous and African.

The most common model brings together series of portraits of couples alongside their children. The paintings also show clothing, jewellery, trades, pastimes, landscapes and the interiors of homes, so that they serve as a record of everyday colonial life.

The curator is art historian Carmen Rodríguez de Tembleque, and the selection brings together works from two institutions: the Museo de América and the Real Academia Española. The exhibition also connects with Lope de Vega, in whose works American characters and settings appear, and it allows visitors to appreciate the diversity reflected in his literary output.