José Joaquín Magón, pintor poblano: Casta paintings

José Joaquín Magón was also known for his casta paintings, a wildly popular genre in the mid-1700s, intended to illustrate the bewildering hierarchy of racial mixtures in the New Spain of the time, a genre that as a man of mixed race he would have been drawn to.
   Ironically, the largest collection of his casta portraits is currently found outside Mexico: in the Museo de América, in Madrid, Spain, brought there from Mexico in 1772 by Francisco Antonio Lorenzana y Butrón, the then newly appointed archbishop of Toledo.

 

  

 

  

Recently restored these 16 canvases are all inscribed with the names of each racial group - some of them now viewed as demeaning or derogatory, especially concerning the lower echelons of the racial hierarchy.

 

 

 

 

Text © 2018 Richard D. Perry
color images from online sources