This charming portrait of a lady with her canine mascot offers a window into late eighteenth and early nineteenth century society in almost any of the viceregal centers of wealth, culture and power such as Mexico City or Lima. The subject may have been the wife of a high ranking official in service to the Spanish crown whose family having inherited land at some point, had become landed gentry or hacendado, someone who owned acres of land and employed workers on the hacienda or estate, or a wealthy merchant involved in trading or other activities such as sugar or cochineal production.1 Although not aristocrats, the members of these wealthy groups could afford certain luxuries such as commissioning portraits of their wives and family. Dressed in a style inspired by Neoclassicism currents coming from Spain where a Bourbon king sat on the throne since 1700, the sitter wears a brightly-printed local cotton muslin dress with a restrained grace and ease. The French aesthetic, especially in fashion and the arts pervaded the European continent until the first quarter of the nineteenth. The flowing garment is closely fitted to the torso just under the bust and adorned with a black ribbon. The rich colors in the all over floral pattern mimic a carpet of flowers. Her large pendant and her earrings appear to be of gold; on her fashionable short hair she wears a feather comb; and she stands in front of a green cloth of honor, a pictorial convention used by painters since the Renaissance, which denotes her social status. With one hand, she holds a rose and with the other, a folded ivory fan, a luxurious but also practical accessory imported from Asia via the Manila Galleon which also acts as yet another signifier of her sophisticated lifestyle. Although the identity of the painter remains unknown, he was one of the many local talents that were prevalent in every major city in viceregal society.
M.J. Aguilar, Ph.D.

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1 J. Lockhart, “The Merchants of Early Spanish America: Continuity and Change,” in Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv, vol. 20, no. 3/4, Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert, (1994) 223–45.