Content:
-simple composition (arrangement of visual elements in a picture)
-Spanish father and Indigenous mother with their son
-mother and father surrounding two children: a young boy is carrying the couples baby *NOTE THE YOUNG BOY (NOT BABY) IS NOT THEIR CHILD
-Modeled off the Holy Family: Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, and Christ as a child (interpretation)
-The indigenous mother:
dressed in huipil (traditional woman’s garment worn by indigenous women from central Mexico and Central America), lace sleeves, and expensive jewelry
-turns and looks at husbands as she gesture towards child
-husband (Spaniard father):
-wears French-style European clothing, powdered wig
-gazes down at the children, hand resting on the child’s back or wife’s arm
-the young servant looks upwards to the father (not his father): allude to his greatness
-The family appears calm, harmonious, loving
Context:
-mestizo: (a person of a European and indigenous parent) a Spanish man and an elite Indigenous woman
-This painting (the first of the series as many like this were= indigenous mother + Spaniard father)belongs to a larger series of works that document the intermix racing of the Spaniards, indigenous, Africans, and mixed population (e.i. mestizo)
-Casta paintings: focus on bad living conditions for families that become more and more racially mixed, 2nd half of 18th century
-As the series progresses in casta paintings (different races mixing, as families become more racially mixed) = displayed in tattered, torn, and unglamorous surroundings/ bad family dynamic after the Spaniard and indigenous family: race mixing is bad, seen as lower if you do not have European descent
-also appear darker as they become more mixed, less attractive and dirty: race mixing in bad
Function:
-Discourage race mixing
-influences that if mixed with European blood one is superior, the family will live in harmony, and “perfection” as seen in the work
-casta paintings: reflect increasing social anxieties about inter-ethnic mixing
-it is possible that elites (pure blood) found the dilution of pure-bloodedness alarming (they were the ones that commissioned the paintings)
-My interpretation: as many European (Spaniard men) voyaged to South America, they did not bring European wives and had to mix with the women there. They still didn't agree with racial mixing and discouraged it (contradictory) therefore disliked when people keep mixing more because it “dirtied” European blood
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More in-depth background and information!
-produced in sets of 16
-The Mestizo: made in New Spain (Spanish colonial Mexico) during the second half of the eighteenth century
-caste paintings (pinturas de castas): a misleading idea of what families were like due to depictions (made families with European blood seem happy, harmonious than those without, looked dirty and unhappy)
-casta paintings: a mother, father, and a child (sometimes two)
“Enlightenment”: people can be categorized + hierarchy by racial makeup and appearance
-Racially labeling people and where they are on on the “racial hierarchy”: costumes, accouterments, activities, setting, and flora and fauna influenced this in composition
-Indigenous peoples who lived outside of “civilized” social norms + Christian= mecos (barbarians)
-Spaniards distinguished from others in the casta paintings= depicted as best dressed and most “civilized”
-the more European you are, the closer to the top of the social and racial hierarchy you belong
-The first painting in the series/ those on top where European (Spanish man and an elite Indigenous woman, accompanied by their offspring: a mestizo) showing that they were higher
-As the casta series progresses + the mixing increases: names in casta paintings to label people are more derogatory/negative and racial mixing is seen as disproved/bad
Commissioned works?
-Viceroys (the stand-in for the Spanish King in the Americas) AKA elites
-were commissioned for important administrators
https://smarthistory.org/spaniard-and-indian-produce-a-mestizo-attributed-to-juan-rodriguez/
