Attributed to Miguel Cabrera (Antequera de Oaxaca, Mexico, 1715 / 1720 - Mexico, 1768) 'Casta' Oil on canvas.  82 x 72 cm.    The casta painting theme was developed in New Spain in the 18th century and was intended to publicise and classify the diversity that originated from the mixture of races. It was a complex task, as reported by the Museo Nacional del Prado in the catalogue published for the exhibition 'Tornaviaje. Ibero-American Art in Spain', since 'natives from the West Indies, Spaniards and Europeans, African slaves and a small amount of Asian emigration ... gave rise to a stratified society, but with lines of communication', a diverse society that nurtured caste painting. Even so, the value of this pictorial genre does not correspond exclusively to 'the classifying tendency typical of the 18th century' or even to 'European concepts of the exotic', but studies such as that of Ilona Katzew make us aware of the value of the genre for 'the construction of their own, differentiated image' of New Spanish society. In fact, Katzew continues, casta painting 'is a unique pictorial genre that has no equivalent in European art', indeed, 'it is fundamentally limited to the viceroyalty of New Spain', although miscegenation occurred in all the Spanish colonies. In this sense, the Director and Curator of Latin American Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, concludes in her study that 'casta painting is not a monolithic genre, but one that contains multiple simultaneous meanings' and that, furthermore, 'it offers a clear example of how New Spain could be a generative centre and not just a place that remained on the periphery of artistic events', as has traditionally been considered.   Reference bibliography: - Álvarez Argüelles, Deva. (2019). 'El mobiliario del siglo XVIII a través de la pintura de castas'. Res Mobilis, Vol. 7, nº 9, pp. 16-34. - Katzew, Ilona. (2004). 'Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico'. Yale University Press. - Katzew, Ilona. (2004). 'La pintura de castas: Representaciones raciales en el México del siglo XVIII'. Turner Publicaciones S.L. - López Guzmán, Rafael (Ed.). (2021). 'Tornaviaje. Arte iberoamericano en España.' Museo Nacional del Prado. (pp. 165-181).