From the March 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
When Christopher Columbus sailed west in 1492, aboard was Murcia-born Diego Pérez, a painter hired to draw maps of towns, territories and islands. No works of his survive but, as the Spanish conquest of the New World took hold, a stream of artists followed, from Italy, Flanders and Spain. They were recruited as part of the mission to convert the population to Christianity. Meanwhile, the Flemish Franciscan friar Pedro de Gante, who arrived in the Americas in 1523, founded the College of San José de los Naturales in Mexico City for educating Indigenous boys, including training them to produce religious images.
At first, the influence of Europe was dominant. In Mexico, the arrival around 1640 of Sebastián López de Arteaga, a follower of Francisco de Zurbarán, introduced the tenebrism of baroque painting. In the Viceroyalty of Peru, which covered most of South America apart from Brazil and the extreme south, three Italian painters – Bernardo Bitti, Matteo Pérez de Alesio and Angelino Medoro – encouraged the evolution of a local mannerist style in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Based in Lima, they inspired a homegrown Peruvian baroque, which in turn gave rise to the School of Cuzco. Gradually, the New World became the crucible for a range of distinctive syncretic schools, from shimmering enconchado paintings, decorated with mother-of-pearl, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, to the startling pinturas de castas of the later 18th century, with their meticulous hierarchical documentation of mestizo society. A range of extraordinary artefacts – cabinets, mirrors, picture frames, boxes, bowls, lacquered Barniz de Pasto objects from Colombia – showed off precious materials and specialist techniques.
The Holy Family and the Infant Saint John the Baptist Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child (mid 18th century), anonymous (Cuzco School). Robert Simon Fine Art, New York (price not disclosed)
From the beginning, paintings and artefacts found their way into collections in Latin America, North America and Europe. But for much of the 20th century, these flamboyantly hybrid artworks were a challenge for curators and dealers because they did not fit into familiar cultural categories. At TEFAF Maastricht last year, the Amsterdam dealership Zebregs & Röell showed two enconchado cabinets from Lima, Viceregal Peru (1730–60), still available. According to Dickie Zebregs, ‘They display Hispano-Moresque motifs, were made probably by enslaved Africans, in workshops run by Japanese specialists in namban [export] wares, based upon a British furniture-type.’ They will show a number of similarly complex and spectacular objects at TEFAF this month.
Apart from a flurry of interest in California during the 1920s and ’30s, it was not until the ’70s that collectors began to focus on the field – just as Latin American countries began banning exports of important national heritage, curtailing the trade in works that had not yet left their country of origin. The collectors included, in the United States, Roberta and Richard Huber and Carl and Marilynn Thoma. In the early 2000s a rush of museum shows began to introduce these works to the public: ‘Arts of the Spanish Americas, 1550–1850’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2002; ‘The Grandeur of Viceregal Mexico: Treasures from the Museo Franz Mayer’, which toured the United States in 2002; LACMA’s groundbreaking ‘Inventing Race: Casta Painting and Eighteenth-Century Mexico’ and Denver Art Museum’s ‘Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521–1821’ in 2004; and ‘Latin American Colonial Art’ in Philadelphia in 2006 followed by ‘Journeys to New Worlds: Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Art’ in 2013. A growing Latino population encouraged US museums to expand the range of art they show, study and acquire. In 2017, the Met in New York dedicated a show to a single artist, the 17th-century Mexican painter Cristóbal de Villalpando (see Apollo, September 2017).
Alongside institutional shows, a handful of dealers – including Jaime Eguiguren, Jorge Coll of Colnaghi, Robert Simon and Galería Caylus – have begun to promote the field. Simon, a leading Old Master dealer in New York, remembers selling a painting by the 17th-century Quechua painter Diego Quispe Tito, a leading figure in the Cuzco School, in the late 1990s. More recently his interest was reignited by a visit to Peru, where he discovered that the founding artists of the Cuzco School were Italian baroque painters – his own specialism.
Virgin of Guadalupe (n.d.), Miguel González. Colnaghi, London (price not disclosed)
At the recent Winter Show in New York he exhibited an eye-catching 18th-century Peruvian gilt-wood mirrored frame, housing an 18th-century Cuzco School painting, as well as four anonymous imaginative late 18th-century allegories of the four continents, probably from Mexico. He reports a number of collectors acquiring Viceregal art works as much for their historical value as for their splendour, with interest particularly strong in the south-western US states. Last year he sold an 18th-century Cuzco School canvas of the Immaculate Virgin, with an unusual portrait of the female donor, to Harvard Art Museums, as well as the Cuzco School Portrait of a Lady with a Chiqueador (c. 1690–1710) to Smith College Museum of Art. Simon remarks that secular subjects such as portraits and allegories, rare amid the colourful Madonnas and archangels, tend to attract a premium. For the first time, the gallery has been invited to exhibit Spanish colonial works at the American Art Fair in May.
In 2021 Jaime Eguiguren and Colnaghi collaborated on the show ‘Discovering Viceregal Latin American Treasures’, which opened simultaneously in London and New York. Last autumn, Colnaghi showed seven rare enconchado paintings attributed to Miguel González (1664–1704), Nicolás de Correa (c. 1660–c. 1720) and unknown artists in New York.
In Spain, from where it cannot be exported, they are showing a masterpiece by Manuel de Arellano, on sale for the first time in 300 years: Transfer of the Image and Inauguration of the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Guadalupe (1709). The picture memorialises the embrace by the recently appointed viceroy of New Spain of the Virgin of Guadalupe, beloved by the indigenous population, as a unifying symbol for the whole heterogeneous colony. Prices are rising rapidly: ‘The goods are limited and the demand is high,’ Jorge Coll says.
In a sale organised by Coutau-Bégarie and associates at Hôtel Drouot, Paris, in December, Viceregal Peruvian paintings from the collection of M. and Mme Gérard Priet went consistently well over estimate. Top performing lots included Apparition of the Virgin of Caïma, school of Jacinto Carbajal, Peru, end of 18th century, which sold for €403,000 against a €60,000–€80,000 estimate; and an elaborate, highly decorative Cuzco School painting of Jesus carrying the Cross (c. 1750), which achieved €221,000 (estimate €40,000–€60,000).
Saint Michael Archangel (1640), Luis de Riaño. Christie’s New York, $495,000
Kristen France, Christie’s Head of Latin American Art in New York, confirms that Latin American colonial art is currently drawing strong prices. ‘Enconchado paintings are among the real gems. They don’t come to market often, and condition and whether or not they have their original frames will have an impact on value,’ France says. Cuzco School paintings, especially those with intricate gold-leaf brocading on the surface, are sought after: the anonymous 18th-century Altar of Our Lady of Cocharcas, which sold in New York in October 2023 for $107,100, estimate $20,000–$30,000. Many paintings are unsigned – a confirmed attribution is also an asset. The bold Saint Michael Archangel with faint signature of Luis de Riaño (1596–1667), dated 1640, soared to $495,000 in July 2020, over ten times the low estimate.
Zebregs ascribes a rising market in decorative arts to growing curiosity among European collectors about the culture of their past colonies. Rather than cancel the art that emerged from those violent cross-fertilisations, Zebregs prefers to delight collectors with the rich stories these magnificent objects can tell.
From the March 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.