Saints & Santos

Picturing the Holy in New Spain

Cristina Cruz González

Montserrat A. Báez Hernández

Gauvin Alexander Bailey

IMPRINTScala

FORMAT

HARDBACK ISBN 9781785516085

HARDBACK PUBLICATION DATE 28 August 2025

CATEGORY Art & Illustration

HARDBACK PRICE £ 52.00

OUT OF STOCK

Explore how sacred art evolved in early Mexico, adapting to local cultures and artistic traditions.

This beautifully illustrated book reveals the importance of saints in New Spain, a viceroyalty that was part of the Spanish Empire from 1521–1821, covering modern-day Mexico, Central America, and the US Southwest. In the late sixteenth century, Rome’s attempts to manage sanctity as an official process had a profound impact throughout Spain and the Spanish viceroyalties. Saintly devotions traveled to Mexico, and circulated within the vast territory as images or print, then to be transformed by New Spain’s own communities. Drawing on collections from Mexico and the United States, this book examines the role of images in the construction of the holy: these paintings, sculptures, and engravings routinely used to propagate, celebrate, and venerate saintly figures, and used in official beatification and canonization proceedings. The relationship between sanctity and the pictorial is a long, revered tradition that continues in the work of New Mexico’s santero artists today.

Further reading

JOURNAL

Explore our subjects

Essays, interviews and features from our authors and editors.
0
    0
    Your Basket
    Your basket is emptyReturn to Shop
    Continue Shopping