As any scholar in the field well knows, no single profile could ever best represent “the artist” in the multiethnic and geographically sweeping world of colonial Latin America. Although it is not their specific charge, the chapters in this excellent new edited volume together offer richly textured explanations of why and how this is true. Even more significantly, the nine contributing authors together delineate an expansive definition of what it can mean to be a producer of visual culture. What comes to light in the union of the various microhistories that make up the collection is that the term artist—as we have traditionally used it—may not do precise justice to the dynamic roles played by diverse networks of agents whose hands, minds, and actions led to a complex and robust artistic landscape that developed across the Spanish Americas over the course of three hundred years.
Decades ago, T. J....
University of California Press