This “virtual exhibition catalogue” (viii, xi) represents the first comprehensive study of painting in colonial Quito, capital of the Kingdom of New Granada, in South America. The paintings created in Quito were of exceptional quality, as revealed by the color reproductions of 231 works dating from 1599 until the early nineteenth century, many published here for the first time. Compiled by an international team of art historians, the paintings are presented chronologically, each accompanied by a catalogue entry in which the attribution and date are established, all inscriptions transcribed, the known scholarship assessed, patrons identified, and the provenance outlined. Each artwork is subjected to thorough iconographical and stylistic analysis. Given the amount of substantive data gathered here, this book will prove indispensable to scholars of viceregal art in the Americas, but will also interest nonspecialists, due to its clear prose and plentiful illustrations. Produced in a bilingual edition, its contents are accessible to both English- and Spanish-speaking audiences.

The choice of an exhibition catalogue format allows for detailed discussion of each painting, something that would be unfeasible in a text arranged thematically. This format also encourages consideration of aesthetic issues. Previous scholars, in the opinion of the editor, have discussed Quito paintings more as “cultural artifacts” (xi) or tools for Christianization than in art historical terms. The catalogue focuses on easel paintings produced for monasteries, churches, the cathedral, and private patrons in Quito. The team intentionally avoided works created for export, the subject of two recent publications (Alfonso Ortiz Crespo, 2010; Alexandra Kennedy Troya, 2002).

A first-rate introduction and epilogue by Carmen Fernández-Salvador frame the catalogue. The introduction includes a valuable historiographic review, which surveys the early literature in the 1920s, concerned with the relationship of Quito painting to European art, to later writers swayed by nationalist fervor in their search for a distinctly Ecuadorian aesthetic. More recent work combines visual and documentary analysis, a fruitful course, in the opinion of Fernández-Salvador, and one exemplified by this catalogue.

The introduction also offers the most complete overview of the development of painting in colonial Quito published to date, from its inception during the sixteenth century as a tool of mendicant conversion to independence in the early nineteenth century. The author considers indigenous and mestizo artists, the participation of itinerant Europeans, women artists, varied artistic influences from Spain, Italy, and Flanders, as well as the importance of prints. Her overview reveals artistic developments that parallel European art. Works from the early 1600s exhibit identifiable medievalisms, such as the use of intuitive perspective, gold leaf, precise brushwork, angular draperies, and reality effects. Later painters reveal the influence of Baroque realism, coming from the south of Spain, as seen in the tenebrism, earth-tone palette, and painterliness of their works. Borrowings from Sevillian artists Francisco de Zurbarán and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, both of whom sent works to the Americas, are clearly evident. In the eighteenth century, a distinctive Quito school of painting emerged, in tune with the latest developments in European rococo and neoclassicism.

Many but not all of the works in the catalogue are religious in subject matter. The usual themes appear: the Passion of Christ, lives of the saints, archangels, and the Virgin Mary, the entries on the latter particularly noteworthy for their quality. But the breadth of topics produced by artists in Quito is remarkable. Numerous Old Testament subjects, as well as secular themes such as series on the seasons, the European nations, and the gods and goddesses of antiquity, were also created. The catalogue is also notable for its treatment of portraiture, the first consideration of the genre in Quito. In the catalogue’s epilogue, the author traces the links from colonial art to new themes such as landscape that emerged in the nineteenth century.

This is an important catalogue that fills a significant lacuna in our knowledge of art in the global early modern world. It complements existing work on architecture and sculpture in Quito, and adds to the scholarship on painting in the Americas, a topic much better studied in Mexico and Peru. The numerous color reproductions will serve scholars for years to come. May it inspire other such serious work, and spur further scholarship in the field.