The Seven Colors of Painting: Treatises and Public Affirmation of the Dignity of Art in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

Drawing on a contemporary relation by the poet Alonso Ramírez de Vargas, this article narrates how the painters of Mexico City availed themselves of the public celebrations for the coming of age of Charles II in 1676 as an opportunity for openly reclaiming the liberal intellectual status of the painter’s art. Employing ephemeral media and the language of the emblem, the artists created a triumphal cart as their means of presenting to the archbishop and viceroy Fray Payo Enríquez de Ribera their demands for professional recognition; they likewise made a public declaration of corporate identity that may go some way to explaining the reorganization of the guild of painters in the capital of New Spain from the year 1681.