Overview
A typical set showed parents of different backgrounds with their child, each panel labeled with the caste term for the resulting mixture. They were painted for Spanish and colonial patrons, and some sets were made for export to Spain.
Description
Beyond their racial scheme, the scenes portray dress, food, trades, and domestic life, so they are also a rich visual record of everyday colonial society. Their tone ranges from idealized harmony to condescension toward the lower castes.
History and legacy
The genre reflects the caste system that ordered New Spain by ancestry, a hierarchy that independence and later ideas of national identity would challenge. Today casta paintings are studied both as documents of colonial ideas about race and as a window onto daily life.