Juan González (Actif at second half of 17th Centtury in New Spain) "Enconchado". Oil on wood panel inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Signed and dated 1698. 43 x 59 cm. Within a frame in the lower margin is the number "X" and the motto "praeceptum non domum non agrum". As Dr. Joaquín Bérchez notes in his magnificent biographical file for the Museo del Prado on the González brothers: they were two painters who were active in New Spain in the mid 17th century, specialising in the painting of “enconchado” - pictures “stuffed with mother of pearl and helped with colours, as Antonio Ponz defined it in the 18th century-, Miguel and Juan González took a lead role in one of the most singular chapters of New Spanish art in the Modern Period. They were exact contemporaries of Cristóbal de Villalpando, Juan Correa and the Arellanos. The shell inlay technique, which came originally from the Far East, became known early on in the Viceroyalty of New Spain due to the presence of artisans and objects from China and Japan, growing into artistic maturity in the New Hispanic environment in the last decades of the 17th century and the first of the 18th.… As had occurred with the feathered pictures, Mexican lacquers, maize cane sculptures and room dividing screens, the “enconchados” became prized objets d’art, sought and collected by a wide public and clientele, both in New Spain and in the Iberian Peninsula. Miguel and Juan González, together or separately, are linked to more than a hundred works of art, of which the twenty-five panels depicting scenes of the conquest of Mexico, kept in the Museo de América in Madrid, dated 1698 and signed ¬[Miguel Gonzes fesi a 1698 (panel 9) (Juan) Gonz. Fecci 1698 (panel 24)], have come to be one of their most representative samples."