The great cathedral of Mexico City is a visual opera of light, movement and sacred history. Only within the past few decades has Spanish colonial art, now usually referred to as Spanish American or Viceregal art, been awarded anything like center-stage status in North American museums. So people began to look at Spanish American art and see it for what it is: deeply fabulous, as the Met exhibition confirms. Commissioned for the convent of Corpus Christi in Mexico City, the work’s inspiration was as much political as devotional. But by 1700 Mexico, also called New Spain, had its own fully developed art industry, replete with guilds and academies, family dynasties and professional rivalries.

Source: New York Times May 10, 2018 19:18 UTC