Only from his home do they come, from the innermost part of heaven, only from there comes the myriad of flowers. . . . Where the nectar of the flowers is found, the fragrant beauty of the flower is refined. . . . They interlace, they interweave; among them sings, among them warbles the quetzal bird. - Cantares mexicanos, 1 6th century1

When Mexico City's Corpus Christi Convent opened its doors to indigenous women in 1724, nearly two centuries of colonial rule had passed, during which Amerindian women were prohibited from becoming nuns.2 Yet this group had always been present in New Spain's convents (that is, colonial Mexico), mainly as servants to Creole and Spanish nuns.3 It was largely through these women that Mesoamerican traditions contributed to the material production of New Spain's nunneries - including the spectacular floral trappings featured in paintings known today as monjas coronadas (literally, "crowned-nuns") portraits.'1 Many of these images, although rife with Christian themes and symbols, simultaneously conjure the evocative words of the ancient Nahua (Aztec) poem quoted above, which attests to traditional indigenous notions of die sacred. The distinctive New Spanish production of the crowned-nun image argues for the combination of traditional indigenous and Euro-Christian practices and knowledge in its construction. This combination is evident in die iconic image of the New Spanish nun as it appears in colonial profession portraits of both Euro-American and Amerindian nuns.

In light of the controversy surrounding the profession of indigenous women as nuns, the way their profession portraits pictorially render their sitters' ethnicity is revealing. By conforming to a standardized pictorial syntax and flowery iconographie content also present in contemporaneous portraits of Euro-American nuns, these works fulfill their indigenous patrons' desire to demonstrate social and spiritual commensurability between these ethnically distinct groups.11

At the same time, nuns' profession portraits (and other convent arts) have elements that are based partially on Mesoamerican traditions dial survived die Spanish Conquest and were transformed in the colonial, Christian context. In particular, the unique floral trappings in nuns' profession and funerary portraits can be related to partly overlapping Euro-Christian and Mesoamerican symbols and concepts of die human soul and paradise. Existing scholarship on crowned-nun portraits focuses entirely on the Euro-Christian meanings of nuns* bridal trappings as symbols of mystical marriage and victory over sin, as well as allusions to the Virgin crowned.*1 While this interpretation is correct, it is also incomplete: New Spain's floral artists who devised nuns' floral trappings often drew on Mesoamerican traditions as well as Europe's classical and Christian traditions. The multicultural qualities of these trappings complicate the conventional image of New Spain's nunneries, as well as crowned-nun portraits, as institutions and objects that primarily reproduced Euro-Christian culture and values. Accordingly, it is more accurate to follow a vein of recent scholarship that identifies New Spanish nunneries as microcosms of their larger, multiethnic society.7

Current research on hybridity in the visual arts helps to tease out Euro-Christian and Mesoamerican forms and meanings in the ritual objects that nuns wore on their bodies. Some of the flowery trappings examined here exemplify admixtures that have gone unnoticed by modern eyes because they do not combine recognizably distinct Mesoamerican and European forms. Admittedly, these works do not display the visually jarring qualities for which early colonial LatinAmerican visual culture is known. However, within LatinAmerican visual studies, a problematic concept of hybridity has often compelled scholars and students to measure it by the co-presence of European and recognizably pre-Columbian forms. According to this model, societies are divided diametrically into "victors and vanquished"; indigenous values and productions either became extinct or were so subsumed by European ones that they effectively disappeared. Furthermore, the visual admixtures that occurred along the "path of extinction" were die result of the natural supremacy of European forms over native ones. This perspective establishes a framework in which native forms and knowledge did not take hold in Euro-Christian society and perpetuates the domination of the colonial model, a tide that has begun to turn in recent years.

Crowned-Nun Portraits and Indugenous Nuns in New Spain

When the famed New Spanish mystic Sor Isabel de la Encarnación died in 1633, her convent of Santa Teresa in Puebla hired an artist to paint her portrait, which would have served as a memento - and perhaps even a relic - for the convent's nuns. In preparing her for burial, the nuns dressed Sor Isabel in the brown and white habit of the Carmelites, and they placed a crown embellished with flowers on her head and a palm frond across her body as she lay on her funeral bier. The portrait, which captured this image, is among the first of its kind mentioned in New Spain's written record.8 Unfortunately, this work has not survived to the present day, but others like it were made in New Spain and other parts of die Spanish Empire, including Peni and what is now Colombia.11 The practice of placing these trappings on a nun's body and commissioning a funerary portrait stems from early modern Spain and other parts of Catholic Europe.'" Portraits of deceased Spanish nuns depict their subjects reposing in their caskets and bearing the same accoutrements that Sor Isabel wore in death. For example, in the 1653 funerary portrait of Madre Ana de Santa Inés, the deceased reposes on a bier surrounded by four lit candles, wearing a floral wreath and clutching a small crucifix in her tightly clasped hands (Fig. 1). Madre Ana also cradles a long palm frond in the crook of her arm. The inscription below identifies her as the prioress of Madrid's Convent of Santa Isabel when she died at the age of eighty-one. ' ' Just three years before Sor Isabel of Puebla died, a funerary portrait of the recently deceased venerable mother Sor Gerónima de la Asunción, a Spanish abbess and convent founder, arrived in Puebla; it may have inspired the nuns of Santa Teresa to commission a similar picture of their recently departed sister.12

New Spanish funerary portraits of nuns and their Spanish counterparts, distinct on two counts, can be easily differentiated. In the first place, the Spanish works usually picture abbesses, convent founders, and royal women, while the New Spanish portraits mostly feature common nuns who were considered exceptionally pious.18 Second, in New Spanish works, the simple wreaths and palm fronds of the Spanish works became immense floral crowns and fiorai staffs, as seen in the funerary portrait of Madre Mariana de Señor San José (Fig. 2), that were sometimes elaborated with religious figurines and artificial flowers, birds, and butterflies. The South American portraits also feature headdresses; however, these are entirely composed of real and artificial flowers and lack the religious figurines, birds, and butterflies of their New Spanish counterparts. Additionally, New Spain's artists painted portraits of living nuns, recently professed and bearing the same kind of spectacular fiorai trappings seen in the funerary works (Figs. 3, 4, 6-8, 18, 19, 21). In the same way that convents commissioned and collected funerary portraits of their most venerated members, families commissioned profession portraits to keep as mementos of their cloistered daughters.14 Nuns' profession portraits, which constitute a significant subgenre of New Spanish portraiture, are exclusive to New Spain; nowhere else did artists paint such works.

The earliest profession portraits, which date from the first half of the eighteenth century, feature roughly the same trappings and pictorial format as do later portraits, suggesting that the crowning ritual was fully developed and localized by the early part of the century. Unsigned works and portraits by some of New Spam's most esteemed painters - Miguel Cabrera (ca. 1695-1768), José de Alcíbar (ca. 1735-1803), and Juan Patricio Morlete Ruú (ca. 1714-1772), among others - comprise this genre. The profession portrait bears strong affinities with religious paintings and early modern portraiture, in which die sitters are represented in formal poses and with a solemn demeanor and are clad in rich religious symbols that caJi to mind Baroque images of the saints.

In fact, colonial portrayals of Saint Rose of Lima, which picture her with a wreath of roses and a floral bouquet encircling the Christ Child, may have influenced the development of New Spain's profession portraits (Fig. 5).15 Saint Rose was not canonized until 1 67 1 , shortly before the earliest dated profession portrait in New Spain was painted; of course, such portraits may have existed earlier. In any case, die close temporal correspondence between this saint's canonization and the proliferation of profession portraits in New Spain is probably not coincidental. The visual correspondence of Spanish America's first saint with New Spanish nuns would not have been lost on an American authence, for whom Christianity and its saints constituted a powerful vehicle for self-representation.16

Crowned-nun portraits were produced well into the early nineteenth century and remained consistent in form and content. The vast majority of these works picture Creole subjects, the group to which Saint Rose of Lima belonged. Only a handful depict indigenous nuns. To understand the significance of this disparity, one must look briefly at the foundation of convents for native women hi New Spain.

After Corpus Christi opened its doors to native women, three other convents followed suit: Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Cosamaloapan in Atlixco, Michoacan (1734), Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles in Oaxaca (1774), and Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (also called Enseñanza Nueva) in Mexico City (1811). Except for Enseñanza Nueva, which was under the jurisdiction of the Company of Mary and was connected with a school for girls, these convents belonged to the Capuchins and First Order CJarists, austere branches of the Franciscan order. Corpus Christi's requirements for entry were the most stringent: (1) aspirants had to be of noble status, (2) they had to prove their untarnished indigenous lineage (pureza de sangre), (3) they had to be of legitimate birth, (4) they had to prove that their parents never engaged in lowly occupations, (5) they had to demonstrate that they chose to enter the convent freely, (6) they must never have been prosecuted by the Inquisition, and (7) they had to be physically capable of enduring die requisites of the religious life, such as fasting and penance.17 Additionally, they had to demonstrate a rudimentary understanding of Latin as well as literacy in Spanish, possess mathematical and musical knowledge, practice the so-called feminine arts,18 and be versed in moral and religious education. The requirements to enter the other convents for native women, although similar, allowed some flexibility regarding lineage and social class.'" Nevertheless, unsullied bloodline and high social rank were required of native professants, as they were for Creole and Spanish nuns.

Corpus Christi broke the racial barrier, and for this reason its founding and early years of operation were somewhat controversial. In fact, the very proposal of a convent exclusively for indigenous nuns required colonial officials and ecclesiastics to determine whether the "natural disposition" of Amerindians was consistent with the religious life, a question whose roots stretched back to die sixteenth-century debate between the Aristotelian, "natural slave" perspective of Juan Gines de Sepúlveda (I489-1573) and the protectionism of Bartolomé de las Casas (ca. 1484-1566).2" Even after two centuries, the fundamental question of the nature of Amerindians was still at issue for many Spaniards. Many influential prelates, government officials, and nuns argued that native women were naturally dim-witted (falla de luz), emotionally immature, incapable of observing chastity, rustic, superstitious, and unsociable. Their characterization as lacking in maturity and intelligence, much like children, resonated with their legal status as minors. Summing up the position of native women in New Spain, Elisa Sampson Vera Tíldela notes, "If a person were a barbarian and a minor before the law, her also being a woman made her disenfranchisement from full rationality all too obvious."21 In the debate over Corpus Christi, many opponents based their arguments on this very point.22

However, an opposing group, led by the Franciscan order, praised native women for their natural piety, honesty, chastity, and ability to practice die rules of the religious life. Asunción Lavrin has pointed out that this strategy distinguished native women as God's faithful servants, on whom he bestowed his grace because of their simplicity and lowliness.211 This notion stems from the New Testament, in which Christ declares that God reveals his mysteries to the dispossessed, uneducated, and underprivileged rallier than to the powerful and erudite.24 To the delight of Corpus Christi 's supporters, a royal decree dated March 5, 1724, endorsed the convent, overruling local prohibitions. Nonetheless, it was stipulated that native nuns would not run the convent until its first generation of Spanish founders died. The new convent's abbess, Sor Petra de San Francisco, and a nun from the Convent of San Juan de la Penitencia în Mexico City, was accompanied by a handful of Creole nuns from other Franciscan convents, who served as her administrative staff. Corpus Christi's first native professants were students and servants who had formerly lived in New Spain's various convents. 25

The controversy surrounding the profession of native women raged for some time after Corpus Christi opened and resurfaced in racial tensions that erupted between the convent's founders and native professants. ~h In one instance, Sor María de San Juan Crisóstomo and Sor María del Sacramento, two founding nuns, attempted to prohibit more native women from entering the convent. They revived the contention that this group was simply incapable of following the religions life because of their "natura] limitations" as natives. The native nuns, sensitive to these accusations, were not silent on this matter. In an anonymous document that was probably penned by one of them, their Spanish counterparts are characterized as the least pious and observant members of the religious life.27 It was not until the first generation of founding mothers died and a royal decree prohibited Spanish women from entering native convents that these racial conflicts were resolved and native nuns were able to administer their own institutions and live in relative peace.

As Lavrin has pointed out, the single most effective advocacy for native nuns was a small body of hagiographie literature that extolled the natural virtues of indigenous women.28 The seventeenth-century Creole priest and savant Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora (1645-1700), for example, wrote glowingly of Petronila de Ia Concepción and Francisca de San Miguel, native servants in the Convent of Jesús María who were renowned for their exemplary piety and mystical visions.'2'1 Other New Spanish hagiographies praise the religious aptitudes of native women and were partially intended to promote their rise to the cloisters.30

Significantly, most historical documents that support this point of view do not extol native nuns above their Creole or Spanish counterparts, but instead establish parity between the two groups. For example, in a compilation of native nuns' biographies, probably penned by a confessor in Corpus Christi, the nuns are described as exemplars of chastity, abstinence, obethence, physical discipline, humility, and other virtues that are normally attributed to Spanish and Creole nuns.31 The message here is that indigenous women are just as capable of excelling in the religious life as European and Creole women. This seemingly innocuous point takes high relief in a letter drafted by three native leaders whose daughters were among the first nuns to profess in Corpus Christi. They complain that since the time of Lhe conquest Spaniards have failed to distinguish between native nobles and plebeians, an attitude that meant disgrace for members of their social class.32 Furthermore, they recommend that the white nuns of Corpus Christi be removed so that native nuns could administer their own facility. The founding of a convent for elite native women allowed native nobles to enjoy the same honor and recognition as their Spanish and Creole counterparts - no small matter to indigenous leaders.

One of the ways that elite native families demonstrated or perhaps even amplified their social status was by commissioning portraits of their religious relatives in their profession trappings.' Until Corpus Christi was established, profession portraits were, of course, made only tor Creole and Spanish families (Figs. 3, 4, 18, 19, 21). S4 To date, only three profession portraits of indigenous nuns are known: those of Sor Juana María de Señor San José (Fig. 6), Sor María Joaquina de Señor San Rafael (Fig. 7), and Sor Manuela de Mesa (FÍg. 8), Each work pictures its sitter in a full-length, three-quarter pose, wearing a floral crown and standing in an undefined interior space diat is meant to suggest the austerity of the cloister and its removal from the secular realm. Sor Juana María and Sor María Joaquina wear the dark habit of the First Order Clarists and hold professional candles and immense floral staffs that match the elaboration of their crowns. Sor María Joaquina's profession trappings are the most spectacular, including actual and artificial flowers, religious figurines, and small artificial butterflies. To demonstrate then· humility, which was a requirement of their religious order, Sor María Joaquina and Sor Juana María cast their eyes downward. To the left of Sor Juana Maria's figure a framed, oval escutcheon contains the nun's biographical data.

As a nun of the Company of Mary, Sor Manuela is pictured fingering a booklet, in a gesture that demonstrates her order's dedication to the education of New Spain's young women. An artificial white dove - a symbol of the Holy Spirit - is suspended inside the frame of her crown, which is intertwined with leaves and colorful flowers. To the left of her figure, a biographical inscription, utilizing a conventional formula seen in most crowned-nun portraits, reads:

True portrait of the honorable Manuela Mesa, legitimate daughter of Don Lucas Mesa and of Doña Anastacia Reinoso. She was born on 25 of December 1809 in San Bartolomé in thejurisdiction of'Capulhuac. She became a novice in this convent of the Company of Mary Most Holy of" Guadalupe and Enseñanza de Indias on 2 July 1824 and professed on 18 March 1827, the prioress being the Most Reverend Mother María Luisa de Corral,33

In these three surviving works (though it is probable that there were other crowned-nun portraits of indigenous women), only a few clues betray native heritage, the most significant being the inscriptions naming the convents to which they belonged and their religious habits, which identity orders that allowed indigenous women to profess, namely, First Order Clares and the Company of Mary. Aspects of the sitters' physiognomy also hint at Amerindian heritage, but these alone would not be enough of an indicator, since skin tone is often an unreliable marker of ethnicity.

Given the uproar that Corpus Christi caused, it is significant that these portraits do not emphasize their sitters' indigenousness. In fact, pictorially, they fully conform to the graphic conventions of portraits of Euro-American nuns. This conformity visually equates Euro-American and native nuns, for whose families the elevation of their daughters into the cloisters was a means of verifying their social distinction, just as Creole nuns' portraits brought honor to their families. Furthermore, although the portraits were privately commissioned and displayed in domestic settings, their patrons' high social rank suggests that they were viewed by other members of the social elite - Creole, Spanish, and indigenous - who entered those spaces for various occasions. As with all crowned-nun portraits, these obscure their sitters' individuality with a codified pictorial composition and content that are dominated by spectacular floral trappings, which tend to overshadow the sitters' personal attributes. This pictorial strategy is akin to the hagiographie tactic of characterizing native nuns as being just as capable and observant as their Creole and Spanish counterparts. The outcome is an iconic image of the New Spanish nun, an image conceived not in racial but radier in social and cultural terms.

In a related genre, portraits of indigenous laywomen on the eve of entering the convent accentuate their elite status by showing high-end local and foreign possessions - rich clothes, jewelry, and other signs of social prestige - that also appear in contemporaneous portraits of Creole and Spanish women. In these works, the sitters' native heritage is often evident in the sumptuous huipils (native blouses) that they wear. For example, in her three-quarter portrait, Sebastiana Inés Josefa de San Agustín wears an elaborate huípil patterned with crowns, bicephalic eagles, and Chinese silk galleons and adorned with jewelry, ribbons, and Spanish lace (Fig. 9). Her rich garb and the swag of red cloth behind her denote her elite status, while the carnation symbolizes her betrothal to Christ, and her fan identifies her as a modest and chaste and, therefore, honorable woman.36 The biographical inscription contained in an elegant escutcheon at the upper left denotes her lineage and social rank: "Portrait of Sebastiana Inés Josefa de San Agustín. Legitimate Daughter of Don Matías AJexo Martínez and of Doña Tomasa de Dios y Mendoza. [She was] Sixteen years old in the year 1757. n37

Sebastiana's poise and modest demeanor comply with the standards of early modern Western portraiture, which is meant to convey the sitters' elevated social rank and virtue through elegant dignity and restraint.38 Indeed, her virtue and high status would gain her entry into Corpus Christi, where as the daughter of native lords she would amplify her family's honor.39 Like crowned-nun portraits, works like this one constituted a means by which elite native families could match their social status and religious orthodoxy with those of elite Creoles and Spaniards.

Multicultural Forms and Meanings in Nuns' Trappings

Although there is nothing obviously "indigenous" about the way that native nuns are depicted in their profession portraits, the floral trappings that they bore in their profession and death rituals often contain overlapping Mesoamerican and Euro-Christian elements. Some of these elements appear in other works from the colonial period, most notably, paintings of indigenous newlyweds. In Europe, the practice of crowning newlyweds with flowers dates back to classical antiquity and the Early Christian period, when married couples wore floral wreaths to signify their conjugal union.4" By die medieval period nuns throughout Europe were crowned with floral wreaths when they made their professions and became Christ's brides.41 However, in New Spain, these symbols took on new forms and encompassed a range of" meanings that also drew from traditional Mesoamerican knowledge and customs.

In Desposorio de Indios, attributed to Juan Rodríguez Juárez (1675-1728), which pictures the colonial Mexican wedding of a young native couple, a well-dressed, upper-class bride and groom process from their wedding ceremony with their marriage sponsors, who appear to be Spaniards or Creoles (Fig. 10). Each figure holds up a brightly colored floral staff, similar to those in crowned-nun portraits, and wears a floral wreath and garland. An elderly woman holds up a bouquet of flowers behind them, and a dancer, jester, and musician stand in their path, providing entertainment. Meanwhile, two small dogs, representing marital fidelity, frolic in the foreground as a group of natives in the background carry pulque, a local, indigenous alcoholic drink, to the wedding reception. In the upper-right comer of the composition, the painting's subject is denoted with a gloss that reads "Desposorio de indios" (Indian Wedding).

In his 1763 manuscript on the natural history, inhabitants, and customs of New Spain, Joaquín Antonio de Basarás explained that native newlyweds and their sponsors were adorned with crowns, floral staffs (súchiles), and garlands for their wedding ceremonies and again when they arrived at the groom's residence. Musicians and a dancer who set the celebratory tone for this happy occasion accompanied them along the way.4a Rodríguez Juárez's painting and other ones like it suggest that floral trappings were a well-established part of natives' nuptials.43 Sexual purity and conjugal love, traditionally represented in Christianity by floral crowns and wreaths, certainly resonated with traditional native behavioral codes for elite women, which also extolled these virtues.44 As Basarás noted, after the nuptial meal the party's venerable elders would stand and recite long speeches in which they would advise the bride in marital and family matters.13 The Florentine Codex (ca. 1590) - a cultural encyclopedia of Nahua culture, history, and knowledge eompüed by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún and a group of native amanuenses - details Nahua marriage ceremony customs in which family elders, at the wedding reception, admonished the bride to adhere to her wifely duties.'16 In the Desposori-o de Indios the themes of sexual purity and marital fidelity especially come across in the bride's floral wreath, constructed entirely of roses, a Christian symbol with which brides and grooms were crowned to indicate their conquest of sexual desire before marriage and their fidelity to one another.47

New Spanish paintings of the marriage of the Virgin Mary may have set the precedent for works like this one. This theme consistently features Saint Joseph with a flowering staff - a symbol of his purity and God's favor for him as the Virgin's husband - while angels shower flowers on the scene.48 In a typical New Spanish example, Sebastián López de Arteaga (1610-1655) highlights the saint's blossoming staff - a bouquet of red roses and white almond tree blossoms - against a darkly contrasting background and directly below a glowing image of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, just as Francisco Pacheco prescribes in his Arte de la pintura (1638), an influential treatise on painting with which Spanish and New Spanish artists were well acquainted (Fig. 1 1 ) .4tl Cherubs hover above the scene and sprinkle flowers on the holy couple as a sunburst above the rabbi, symbolizing God the Father, authorizes the union. Priests who were responsible for the indoctrination of New Spain's natives would have established Saint Joseph and the Virgin as the Christian model for married couples, and in early viceregal times, religious images were often used as supplements or substitutes for catechism. Thus, pictures of Saint Joseph's staff may have been one model for floral staffs that natives carried in their nuptials.50

Floral trappings also appear in seventeenth -century funerary portraits of Spanish nuns to emphasize their virginal triumph through life's many temptations and difficulties. The New Spanish works differed from these by picturing deceased and newly professed nuns with crowns rather than wreaths and bearing palm fronds that, in many cases, are so decorated with flowers and other ornaments that they completely lose any resemblance to the Spanish palm fronds. Instead, they look more like floral staffs or bouquets, similar to those in the Desposorio de Indios and the image of Saint Rose of Lima (Fig. 5). This distinction suggests a local tradition in constructing these floral trappings that was not entirely based on European models.

In New Spain the practice of decorating palm fronds with flowers and other ornaments dates back at least to the midsixteenth century. The Franciscan friar and author Motolinia (ca. 1490-1569) recounted how the natives attached flowers and ribbons to their palm fronds on Palm Sunday: "It is interesting to see the different devices into which they fashion their palms. Over the palm many place crosses made of flowers of various forms and colors. Others have the palms themselves entwined with roses and flowers of various forms and colors.""''1 Because the palm frond is often used as a symbol of virginal purity, in addition to its more popular signification of martyrdom, it is a particularly appropriate symbol for the sacrament of matrimony as well as for a nun's profession. It seems likely, then, that in early New Spain, when friars and their native subjects lived in communities that emulated the first Christian communities described in the New Testament,52 flowery palm trappings like those characterized by Motolinia were also used for such sacraments.

Flower art, however, has a long history in Mesoamerica, with origins that predate the conquest. The Florentine Codex states how xochimanque (flower workers) constructed and offered their assemblages in ancient times:

I arrange flowers. I thread a flower. I string flowers. I make flowers. I form them to be extended, uneven, rounded, round bouquets of flowers.

I make a flower necklace, a flower garland, a paper of flowers, a bouquet of flowers, a flower shield, hand flowers. I thread them.

I string them. I provide them with grass. I provide them with leaves. I make a pendant of them.

I provide one with flowers. I make flowers, or I give them to one that someone will observe a feast day. Or I merely continue to give one flowers; 1 continue to place them in one's hand, I continue to offer them to one's hands. Or I provide one with a necklace, or I provide one with a garland of flowers.1'3

An accompanying illustration made by an indigenous artist pictures a native flower worker seated before an assortment of garlands, wreaths, floral staffs, and bouquets that he has made. He holds up a bunch of flowers in one hand and a single-stem flower in the other (Fig. 12). In another illustration, a seated lord wears a floral wreath and holds up a bunch of flowers before a scattering of similar accoutrements while a nobleman approaches him with more offerings (Fig. 13). Apparently, such elaborate floral trappings were given only to persons of high social rank and were considered an honor. In fact, certain flowers were reserved for lords and outstanding warriors.54

The art of floral works survived well into late viceregal times. In his 1 756 comedy Relación del festejo que a los Marqueses de las Amarìllas les hicieron las Señoras Religiosas del Convento de San Jerónimo, Joaquín de Barruchi y Arana attributed floral productions to native women. In one section, he wrote from the point of view of an indigenous woman who worked as a convent servant and was looking forward to the viceroy and vicereine's visit to the San Jerónimo Convent. After describing a dedicatory structure that she would like to make to honor the viceroy, she goes on to propose making "a crown and staff of olive leaves and thousands of flowers for my Lady, the Vicereine, because she is modest and holy."35

Barruchi y Arana's character would naturally want to honor the noblest of New Spain's women, the queen's representative, with a crown and floral staff. After all, her experience of queenly women would have involved the nuns of San Jerónimo, who, as the "brides of Christ," were considered queens, and they wore crowns and floral staffs at their profession and death ceremonies to emphasize that fact. It seems certain that the Nahua tradition of arranging and offering flowers for ritual purposes, in which elite individuals were adorned with floral accoutrements, carried over into some Catholic ceremonies that already incorporated floral trappings.

Another pre-Hispanic Nahua ritual that involved adorning elite individuals with flowers was die investiture of priestesses (cihuallamacazque) in Central Mexico. According to Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (ca. 1578-1648), a historian of the preHispanic past, aspiring priestesses arrived at the temple wearing a floral wreath and underwent an initiation ceremony similar to a nun's profession. Sigüenza y Góngora, citing IxtlilxochitTs account, claimed that Aztec priestesses established a foundation for New Spain's religious excellence and, despite dieir heathenism, shared some fundamental qualities with nuns, i n r Indi n g chastity, obethence, and enclosure in their service to the divine.50

Nuns' floral trappings exhibit other forms of indigenous knowledge and practices that go beyond the art of the xochimanque. As seen in many crowned-nun portraits, Sor María lgnacia de la Sangre de Cristo's stunning profession trappings contain religious figurines that are framed by actual and artificial flowers, as well as artificial birds and butterflies (Figs. 3, 19). Her crown, which is capped with a white paper dove (representing the Holy Spirit), also carries two angel figurines fluttering inside and is embellished with small artificial flowers, a scarlet bird perched in a floral arrangement between the angels, and two crimson butterflies on the crown's outer borders. Similarly, her profession candle boasts an elaborate paper pelican (symbol of Christ) that picks at its breast in front of a small kneeling figurine of a nun, which is flanked by two scarlet birds and a crimson butterfly perched on the ribbon just below the figurine. The entire assemblage is surrounded with paper streamers and artificial flowers. In addition, Sor María holds up a crucifix and a painted scene of the Virgin of the Apocalypse, framed with colorful artificial flowers. According to the portrait's biographical inscription, Sor María professed in the Convent of Santa Clara in Mexico City, which admitted only Spanish and Creole women as nuns. I suspect that Sor Maria's floral trappings were constructed by the convent's native servants, perhaps with the assistance of the nuns themselves.57

Sor Maria Juana de Señor San Rafael 's profession portrait also pictures many of these elements (Fig. 4). Her crown, for example, contains real and artificial flowers, interspersed with artificial birds and butterflies (on the crown's outer edges and in the negative spaces inside its frame). Her elaborate floral staff displays two small scarlet birds perched on artificial flowers. These embellishments, which appear in many crowned-nun portraits, are absent hi both Spanish and South American portraits of nuns.ni< Such distinctively New Spanish productions may indicate the persistence and transformation of traditional indigenous beliefs; bird, flower, and butterfly elements feature prominently in Mesoamerican concepts of the human soul and the paradisiacal afterlife.

The same elements also appear in the elaborate headdresses of some Aztec goddesses and women. For example, in its marriage almanac, the Codex Borgia - a late pre-Hispanic manuscript from Central Mexico - shows a number of women crowned with a wreath of white flowers, facing their husbands (Fig. 14). Although it is difficult to determine the species to which these flowers belong, a wide array of indigenous flowers carried symbolic values in Mesoamerica, and many were associated with certain feasts, gods, or elites.59 For example, the water lily helped women to guard their chastity;60 the marigold, associated with death, was used in the autumn ceremony that honored the dead.fil Leaders were often given flowers as signs of respect and acknowledgment of their high status."62

Butterflies and birds, along with flowers, can be seen in the headdresses of certain deities in Aztec art. Another illustration from the Codex Borgia pictures the goddess Xochiquetzal seated on a rich throne and gesturing before a bifurcated and blossoming u-ee (Fig. 15). Her headdress is a gaping quetzal head covered in resplendent blue and green feathers, a gold disk, and colorful streamers that run down die length of her back and terminate in stylized flowers.03 The headdress is further embellished by two white geometric elements representing butterflies, which symbolized preciousness (like flowers) and were regarded as the souls of dead warriors and of women who had died in childbirth.04 According to the Florentine Codex, warriors who died on the battlefield and sacrificial victims carried the sun to its zenith every day. After four years, they metamorphosed into precious birds and butterflies and "sucked honey [from the flowers] there where they dwelt. And here upon earth they came to suck [honey] from all the various flowers."1'5 This pleasant afterlife, a kind of resurrection in a gardenlike setting, has a long history in Mesoamerican though t.ß The "flower world" is a place of ancestral origin and return and is related to the sun, heat, music, and luminous colors.*"7 Classic period (roughly 300900 CE) civilizations like Teotihuacan and the Maya developed this theme into the "flower mountain" motif, which embodies a range of symbols that represent life force and a paradisiacal afterworld.68

The flower world, and the flower mountain in particular, are frequent elements in Teotihuacan art, most notably in ceramic censers and murals.6' In one mural, humans dance, sing, eat, and play in and around a watery mountain of sustenance that is surrounded by butterflies and other Hying insects (Fig. 16) .70 This setting resonates with one description of paradise given in the Florentine Codex:

And in Tlalocan there was great wealth, there [were] great riches. Never did one suffer. Never did the ears of green maize, the gourds, the squash blossoms, the heads of amaranth, the green chilis, die tomatoes, the green beans, the cempoalxochitl [marigold], fail. ... So they said that in Tlalocan there is always the putting forth of young shoots, there is always sprouting, it is always spring, it is continually springtime.71

Numerous jade- and turquoise-colored scrolls unfurl from human mouths in this scene, suggesting song or poetic discourse. For the Nahuas, "flower and song" referred to metaphysical knowledge, the noblest of human aspirations.72 It was believed that the supernatural world could actually be conjured through rituals that involved incantations.73 Together, the watery mountain of sustenance, singing humans, flying bisects, and floating or falling flowers identify this scene as the paradisiacal flower mountain.

Another eternal springtime scene is evident in the adjacent mural (Fig. 17). It pictures a frontal deity figure standing between the fertile earth and a helically twisted tree that rises into the sky. Two human figures in elaborate regalia (probably priests or priestesses) stand in profile at either side of the deity and deposit colorful seeds into the watery surface while the deity provides moisture in the form of droplets that stream down from its hands. The tree, dripping nectar from its floral blossoms, is filled with birds, butterflies, and other creatures that suck its nectar.7"' This bucolic scene echoes the Nahua account of the paradisiacal afterworld where the deceased, in the form of birds and butterflies, enjoy sucking the nectar from the various flowers of heaven and earth.75

Even in particular details, this theme resonates with Christian ideas of resurrection and heaven. Because of its mutable nature, the butterfly is a traditional Christian symbol for the human life cycle and resurrection.7fi A variety of birds, too, symbolize spirit; die dove, in particular, enjoys pride of place as emblematic of the Holy Spirit. For Mesoamericans and Europeans alike, birds generally represented privileged human spirits. Christians saw them as resurrected souls that were rewarded with heaven, and Mesoamerican religious traditions held that nobles were transformed into precious things - birds, jewels, and clouds - when they died.77

Shortly after the conquest, these symbols appeared in New Spanish art and literature that natives produced under the supervision of Spanish friars. Among the earliest and most notable examples are the murals of a sixteenth-century monastery in Malinalco, in which birds, bees, and butterflies flutter in a paradisiacal setting of foreign and local flora.70 The theme of these murals is the Christian paradise, but the inclusion of native plants and creatures signals the incorporation of indigenous ideas of paradise as well. Although Christians believe that the quality of the afterlife corresponds to the manner in which the deceased lived on earth (virtuously or sinfully) , whereas Nahuas believed that the quality of one's afterlife corresponded to the manner in which one died, the correspondence among their concepts allowed certain indigenous emblems to carry symbolic currency in a new colonial and Christian society. Recently, Eleanor Wake has convincingly argued that the pre-Hispanic practice of conjuring the sacred through the use of flowers continued in the Christian colonial milieu in New Spain through painting and religious song and dance. She proposes that painted floral imagery in church murals, like those at Malinalco, helped create the context in which the sacred was invoked in ritual.

Nahua devotional literature also demonstrates this phenomenon. As Louise Burkhart has noted for this genre, birds and flowers, in particular, constituted a "rhetorical mode by which Christianity was rendered meaningful" for Nahuas.80 For example, birds, flowers, and precious stones frequently represent deceased human beings or those who are otherwise ritually transformed. In particular, the Virgin Mary and the saints, who are conceived as nobles, are described in these terms, with the most elaborate and evocative descriptors assigned to the Virgin: "oh soft-fragrant-lily-girl fresh/greenflower," or "oh red-fresh /green-rose flower."81 Because Mary is also the Queen of the Angels, she was associated with birds, which natives closely aligned with angels and the souls of deceased humans.

The apparent correspondence of Christian and native concepts facilitated the survival and transformation of some Mesoamerican practices and symbols well into viceregal times. Thus, Sor María Juana de Señor San Rafael's profession portrait (Fig. 4) and others like it that picture birds, butterflies, and saints in a mountainlike arrangement of flowers composing their crowns indicate that native knowledge and craft practices persisted because there was an overlap between analogous Christian and ancient Mesoamerican concepts of spiritual transformation and ideas of paradise. However, there is no evidence that New Spain's nuns regarded their flowery trappings as anything other than Christian in concept and appearance.82 Furthermore, while it is impossible to determine what colonial flower artists thought of their crowns and staffs, it is unlikely that they regarded them as subversive symbols of ancient Mesoamerican religion. Instead, they probably thought of them as ritually meaningful objects that were particularly appropriate in ceremonies involving the apotheosis of privileged or elite individuals.

Of course, nuns1 floral trappings also contained exclusively European symbols, most notably, the pelican and phoenix - as seen on the profession candles of Sor María Manuela de Señor San Ignacio (Fig. 18) and Sor María Ignacia de la Sangre de Cristo (Fig. 19) - which respectively symbolize the body of Christ and his Resurrection. Even birds and butterflies were invoked in Christian terms. For example, Christ in the Garden of Delights by José de Ibarra (1685-1756) identifies these creatures that flutter around Christ's head as symbols of prayer and contemplation (Fig. 20). In this work, a youthful, full-length figure of Christ reclines in a field of flowers glossed with qualities such as "chastity" (the lily), "love" (the rose), "grace," "suffering," and so on,83 gazing at the viewer as he holds up a lily stem with three blossoms, a traditional Christian symbol of the Virgin Mary as well as a reference to the Trinity. With this gesture, he simultaneously signals his preference for the Virgin and her most outstanding quality, chastity, as well as his own titles as the "flower of the field and the lily of the valley.""4 Angels hovering in the air above hold out a crown and staff constructed of human hearts, which are identified as "love,"

Disseminating Indigenous Knowledge in New Spanish Convents

Floral works were not the only indigenous crafts that entered into the material and religious culture of nunneries. In the late nineteenth century, Frances Calderón de la Barca wrote that some Mexican nuns produced feather mosaics, a practice that was nearly extinct by that time.sr> Unfortunately, she did not specify what kinds of objects these nuns made, nor did she identify the nuns who made them. Like floral works, feather mosaics (amantecayotl} were produced in pre-Hispanic times by specialized artisans. Plumage from exotic birds like the quetzal, the hummingbird, the roseate spoonbill, me blue cotinga, and other species was collected and masterfully arranged to produce feather headdresses, warriors' costumes, and other objects and ritual trappings for elite individuals.8 The Florentine Codex explains that the art of feather mosaic was invented by the Toltecs - whom the Nahuas of Tenochtitlan considered the greatest of artists and civilized peoples as well as their own esteemed ancestors.87 For them, feathered objects were particularly precious and were dedicated to the gods as well as to leaders and great warriors.

Shortly after the conquest, friars encouraged feather artists to produce religious images and ecclesiastical trappings using their traditional materials and techniques. Natives especially prized feather mosaics not only because they frequently pictured sacred subject matter such as Christ, the Virgin, and saints but also because they utilized an inherently sacred material that could embody divine essence.88 Thus, a feather mosaic picturing Christ would have itself been considered sacred by a recently indoctrinated native authence and may have even made divinity present for them.8*·1 Feathered trappings worn by prelates may have amplified their connection to the divine.

What sort of feathered objects did Calderon's nuns make? Were they the equivalent of traditional oil-on-canvas religious paintings? Or perhaps small adornments intended for religious statues to which the nuns were devoted? Or perhaps even adornments for the nuns themselves? One wonders whether there were feather-work versions of the pictorial badges (escudos de monja) that some nuns wore on their habits.90 As seen in some crowned-nun portraits, escudos de monja appear on two parts of the habit: just below the chin, usually as a painted pectoral plaque, and as an embroidered element on the cape, along the shoulder area (Figs. 2, 21). The more prominent of the two is the pectoral plaque, which features a religious scene that is named by a tortoiseshell or glass border.

The subject matter of these badges is invariably the Virgin Mary. As Elizabeth Perry has pointed out, escudos de monja visually associate nuns with the model bride, the religious figure with whom they most identified.91 Many of these objects were painted on parchment or copper plates, and a small number of them were authored by some of New Spain's most prominent artists, like Luis Juárez (1590P-1639?), José de Paez (1720-1790?), and Miguel Cabrera. Others, like the shoulder badges, were fabricated with silk and metallic threads. Because most escudo artists did not sign their work, it is difficult to determine who made many of them, but their materials may provide some clues. Because sewing and embroidery were considered "feminine arts" and taught at home and in convents, the embroidered escudos may hâve been fabricated by nuns or their servants and students.92

In shape, function, and subject matter, escudos de monja have a close analogue in relicarios (lockets featuring religious imagery), which were worn by laypeople or offered by them to religious statues. In fact, we know that some colonial relicarios were made of feathers; a number of them have survived to the present day, allowing the modern viewer to imagine what sorts of feathered objects may have circulated in New Spain's convents (Fig. 22). The brilliant, natural colors and iridescent quality of feathered relicarios distinguish them from embroidered and painted escudos and relicarios. Although there is no evidence thai feathered escudos were made, if the objects Calderón saw were worn by the nuns, they would have amplified the sense of holiness and nobility that floral trappings already established, since feathers and flowers were linked in the flower world.

Indigenous nuns in New Spain did not wear escudos de monja, so if the objects that Calderón saw were escudos, they probably would have been produced in nunneries that admitted only Creole and Spanish professants.93 However, when Calderón made her feather-work journal entry, she was traveling in the present-day state of Moralia, and she may have been referring to the native nuns of the Convent of Nuestra Señora de Cosamaloapan located in that area. If so, the nuns' feathered objects may have been intended for sale, not personal use. But this need not militate against the production of feathered objects in nonindigenous nunneries. Native girls and women who lived and worked in these convents may have made them or taught the nuns how to make them, as they may have done for floral trappings. Alternalively, some of these objects could have been made by aspiring nuns' families or their families' native servants and contacts outside the convent. Whatever the sources and circumstances of production, convents became centers in which floral arts and, to a lesser degree, feather works were desired and, in many cases, even (co)produced by nuns, regardless of their ethnic background.

If this was the case, and I suspect that it was, indigenous elements in the material and visual culture of New Spain's convents need not imply native craftsmanship.94 on the contrary, traditional indigenous practices - namely, floral works and feather mosaics - entered into the broader cultural milieu of New Spain's convents, where Spanish, Creole, African, Amerindian, and ethnically mixed women came into contact and expanded each other's cultural knowledge base.

Persistence and Transformations in Colonial Contexts

New Spanish nuns and die artists who painted their portraits projected an image that was distinctly local and unlike that of their European and South American counterparts. In other words, there is no mistaking these portraits and dieir sitters as anything but New Spanish. Transforming the European precedents of wreaths and unadorned pahn fronds that symbolized purity and martyrdom, indigenous and/or nonindigenous women inflected their flowery crowns and staffs with Mesoamerican floral practices that carried basic meanings of eminence, preciousness, and divinity. The result was an amplification of the nuns' spiritual supremacy and the projection of a sense of solidarity, real or imaginary, among New Spain's nuns regardless of religious order or ethnic identity.

Despite their popular image as impenetrable fortresses, colonial convents were microcosms of a multicultural society through which people and ideas continually flowed. From the beginning, native women and their cultural knowledge and practices had a place in the convents, in which certain aspects of Mesoamerican concepts of the divine overlapped with corresponding Christian concepts. The ancient Nahua poem quoted above states in Nahua terms that birds and flowers radiate from heaven, a concept that is commensurate with the Christian idea Of a heavenly paradise. Because these celestial symbols created a context for transforming the mundane mto the sacred, it is fitting that they should be included in the nuns' floral crowns and staffs, which symbolize and activate the metamorphosis of something ordinary (a laywoman, albeit socially elite) into something sacred (a "bride of Christ"). In these trappings, birds, butterflies, and images of the saints appear among "interlacing" and "interweaving" flowers - to use die language of the poem - conjuring images of paradise and its paramount ruler, Christ, die divine groom. In the profession and death rituals, these trappings would have been activated with music, song, and prayer, which combined to make the sacred present and sanctify the nuns, who took on the qualities of their vestments.

Floral arts and other indigenous traditions that circulated in New Spain's convents are not straightforward versions of pre-Hispanic knowledge and practices. Rather, they are part of a larger body of ancient Mesoamerican traditions that persisted into post-conquest times because they resonated with and conformed to Christian concepts.05 The high degree of commensurability between the Mesoamerican flower world and the Euro-Christian concept of heaven would have made the former seem unremarkable or perhaps even undetectable to nonnatives who saw or even wore nuns' floral trappings. If this was the case, and I suspect that it often was, the trappings may exemplify James Lockhart's "double-mistaken identity," in which two culturally distinct groups wrongly assume that they understand an object and its meaning in die same manner.01* Yet native nuns and their families may have understood these bridal trappings to be objects of divine embodiment that evoked the spiritual realm as well as symbols of virtuousness, martyrdom, and marriage to Christ. It is likely that natives did not feel the need to distinguish between Mesoamerican and Christian concepts of the sacred, which they harmoniously brought together in beautiful objects like floral crowns and flowering staffe.

Since George Kubler published his seminal essay "On the Colonial Extinction of the Motifs of Precolumbian Art," scholars have challenged his uncompromising position that the deepest symbolic and expressive behaviors of native peoples in Mexico collapsed after the conquest and that the art objects that they produced in viceregal times are no more than hollow expressions of an extinct or dying culture.97 First, this position does not adequately account for the continual transformations in which cultures and their expressive forms engage, be tiiey gradual and subtle or abrupt and destructive. Second, it privileges visuality among cultural practices. In a more recent critical study on notions of cultural mixing, Carolyn Dean and Dana Leibsohn have disputed the premise that we must be able to see pre-Hispanic forms in art in order to prove that native cultures were not totally obliterated by the conquest. 98

Arguments for the extinction of indigenous knowledge and cultural practices also betray the view of distinct groups (as, for example, Europeans and Amerindians) as homogeneous, when, in fact, they were and are heterogeneous in ethnic, political, social, and sexual terms. Thus, it is just as problematic to characterize "native art" or "native culture" as a unified whole that either survived or became extinct as it is to group all European art and culture in the same category.(TM) Ftirthermore, as Claire Farago has recently pointed out, this framework reproduces the colonial subjugation of the vanquished and their cultural productions, rendering them exotic and unintelligible. She calls for scholarship that avoids reinforcing the colonizer's perspective and values, that is more attuned to the values of indigenous or colonized subjects."100

Dean and Leibsohn observe that art objects are often considered "hybrid" because modern viewers perceive them as a jarring admixture of distinct cultural traditions, but that in their original contexts, many of these objects were probably not so regarded. The authors argue for a more inclusive definition of hybridity that allows for both the "unsettling and the daily nature of things."101 To modern eyes, crowned-nun portraits and the flowery trappings that appear in them may seem "daily" or ordinary because they do not explicitly display the customary signs of cultural admixture. This may also have been die case for many colonial Euro-Americans who did not perceive indigenous practices and knowledge in these works. However, for their makers and the nuns who wore them, flowery trappings were far from ordinary objects. Floral crowns and staffs were symbols of, and even instruments that invoked, the sacred transformations that nuns experienced in then" rituals. By abandoning an epistemological framework that measures the relative value of colonial art and culture against the diametrically opposed notions of "survival" and "extinction," and instead becoming sensitive to the multivalent meanings and precedents of these otherwise ordinarylooking works, we witness yet another feat of their extraordinary transformative power as multicultural and otherworldly objects.

Notes

This paper was originally written for the 2010 annual conférence of ihe Society of Early Americanists in Saint Augustine, Flurida, and then revised for the American Society for Ethnoliìstory's annual conference of the same year in Ottawa, Canada. Ii is based on rny current book project on religious portraiture in New Spain. Special thanks to Fred Luciani and Camilla Townsend, both of whom read and offered their comments on those: earlier drafts. I am also grateful to The Art Bulletins anonymous readers and Nancy Mann, whose excellent suggestions I have incorporated here. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.

1. A passage from the six teen th-ceniury Cantares meximnas (? compilation of Nahua/Aztec poetry), in Miguel León Portilla, Aztec Thought and Culture: A Study of the Ancient Náhuatl Mind, Irans. Jack Emory Davis (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), 77.

2. There were a few exceptions, Io be sure. In the sixteenth century the noble heritage of the mestiza granddaughters of Moctezuma II, Isabel and Catalina Cano Moctezuma, enabled them to become nuns in the Convent of Ia Concepción in Mexico City. María Justina Santbía Viejo, "La Concepción y Corpus Christi: Raza y vida conventual femenina en México, siglo XVlII, " in Manifestaciones religiosas en el mundo colonial americano, vol. 2, Mujeres, inslitucianeí y culto a María, ed. Clara García Ayluardo and Manuel Ramos Medina (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios de Histórica de México Condumex, 1994), 18. Also in 1607, a native cacique, Diego de Tapia, founded the Convent of Santa Clara in Querelare for his daughter, who became the convent's abbess. However, after her death the convent prohibited other native women from professing. Ann Miriam Gallagher, "The Indian Nuns of Mexico City's Monasterio of Corpus Christi, 1724-I821," in lMin American Women in Historkal Perspectives, ed. Asuncion Lavrin (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. 1978), 152.

3. "Creole" generally refers to American-born individuals of Spanish stock.

4. Notable studies on crowned-nun portraits include Josefina Muriel and Manuel Romero de Terreros, Retratos de monjas (México City: Editorial Jus., 1952) ; Rogelio Ruíz Gomar, "Portraits of Nuns," Artes de México: Monjas Coronadas, no. 198 (1978): 99-101; Elisa García Barragan M., "En la intimidad de un artificio: Retratos de monjas coronadas," m Una mujer, un legado, una historia: Homenaje ft Josefina Muriel, ed. Amava Garrita (Mexico City: UNAM, 2000), 86-93; Kirsten Hammer. "Monjas Coronadas: The Crowned Nuns of Viceregal Mexico," in Retratos: 2,001) Years of Latin Ameritan Portraits, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 86-101; Elizabeth Perry. "Convents, Art, and Creole Identity in Late Viceregal New Spain," in Woman and Art in Early Moiiern Latin America, ed. Kellen Kee Mein tyre and Richard E. Phillips (Boston: Brill, 2007). 321-41; James M. COrdova, "Aztec Vestal Virgins and the Brides of Christ: The Mixed Heritage of New Spain's Monjas Coronarlas," Colonial Latin American Review 18, no. 2 (August 2009): 189-218; and Alma Montero, Monjas coronadas; Profesión y muerte en Hispanoamérica virreinal (Mexico City: Plaza y Valdés, 2008).

5. The term "race" derives from nineteenth-century concepts thai distinguished between white and nonwhite groups and is therefore anachronistic when applied to early modern Latin America. I employ Walter D. Mignolo' s notion of race, which "is not a question of skin color or pure blood but of categorizing individuals according to their level of similarity/proximity to an assumed model of ideal humanity." hi the case of New Spain, ihat ideal was the elite Euro-Christian adult male. Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005), 16.

6. Mûrie! and Romero de Terreros, Retratos de monjas, 41; Barragan M., "En la intimidad," 91; Hammer, "Monjas Coronadas," 94-97; Paul Vandenbroeck, "Novias coronadas," in Monjas coronadas: Vida conventual femenina en Hispanoamérica (México City: G???, 20OS), 167-77; Montero, Monjas coronadas, 179-208; and Perry, "Convents. Art," 336. Perry, 338, also acknowledges that "Mexica traditions may have contributed to the creation of the elaborate floral crown tradition of colonial Mexico."

7. Monica Díaz. Indigenous Writings from the Convelli: Negotiating Etfmir Autonomy in Colonial Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010); Asunción Lavrin, The Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008); Margarel Chowning, liehellioux Nuns: The Troubled History tifa Mexican Convent (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Rosalva Loreto López, Las conventos /nominas ? ft mundo urbano de la Puebla de los Angeles del siglo xviii (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2000); and Kathryn Burns, dilaniai Habits: Convertís and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzca, Peru (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999).

8. Pedro Salmerón, Vida de la- venerable Madn Isabel de la Encarnaeiß», Carmelita Descalza, natural df la- Ciudad de to Angeles (Mexico: Acnydado de la Cecarea, 1675), 117r.

9. For examinations of the South American funerary portraits, see Pilar Jaramillo de Zuleta, En alnr de santidad: Aspectos del convento colonial 1680-1830 (Bogotá: Iglesia Museo de Santa Clara, 1992): and Montero, Monjas canmadaí.

10. Paul Vandenbroeck, Le jardín clos de l'âme: L'imaginaire de* religiewxí dans les Pays-Bas du Sud, depuis if. i3e siècle (Brussels; Palais de BeauxArts de Bruxelles, 1994).

11. "Retrato de ta Benerabie Madre Ana de Santa Ynes priora del Real Convento de Santa lsabel de la villa de Madrid murió de ochenta y un años de edad en el de mil y seiscientos y cincuenta y tres a 21 dias del mes de abril aviendo sido religiosa sesenta y tres años y los treinta y cuatro de ellos priora en e! dicho convento" (Portrait of the Venerable Mother Ana de Santa Inés, prioress of the Royal Convent of Sanut Isabel in Madrid, she died at the age of eighty-one on April 21, 1653, having been a nun for sixty-three years, thirty-four of which she was the prioress of the said convent).

12. Fray Bartholome de Letona, Per/erta rf/igiö.to (Mexico: La Viuda de Juan de Borja, 1662). 61r.

13. For example, Carlos de Sigûenza y Góngora states that the funeral portrait of Madre María Antonia, a nun of the convent of Jesús María, was intended as a model to inspire virtue among the convent's living nuns. Siguen/a y Góngora, Paraíso occidental (1G83; Mexico City: Cien de México, 1994), 323-24. See Montero, Monjas coronadas, 144.

14. Muriel and Romero de Terreros, Retratos de monjas, 29; Rui/ Gomar, "Portraits of Nuns," 100; and Montero, Monjas ctnvnadas, 297-305.

15. For more on the relation between the image of Saint Rose of Lima and crowned-nun portraits, see Montero, Monjas coronadas, 253-62; and Córdova, "Aziec Vestal Virgins," 204-6,

16. For a study on Saint Rose of Lima's function as an emblem of Creole identity, see Ramón Mujica Pinilla, Rosa limetisis: Mística, politica f iconografìa en torno a lit patraña de América (Lima: Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos, 2001). For similar studies on the Virgin of Guadalupe (the most recognized symbol of New Spanish and Mexican religious identity), see Jacques Lafaye, Guadalupe and Quetsaìcottll; The Formatimi of Mexican National Consciousness, 1531-Í813, trans. Benjamin Keen (Chicago: Universiry of Chicago Press, 1976); and Jeanette Peterson, "The Virgin of Guadalupe: Symbol of Conquest or Liberation?" Art Journal *>\, no. 4 (Winter 1992): 39-47.

17. Lavrin, TV Brides oj 'Christ, 256.

18. These included cooking, sewing, washing and ironing clothes, and other manual tasks traditionally assigned to women. Josefina Muriel, Las indicts fcu:i(jius At Carpus Christi (Mexico City: UNAM, 1963), 62; and Lavrin, 7"Ac Brûles of Christ, 42.

19. Lavrin, The Brian of Christ, 257.

20. Tliis débale involved scrutinizing and utilizing Greco-Roman and Christian concepts of human nature that had historically informed the Spanish colonial enterprise in the Americas. On the one hand, Aristotle's notion of barbarous peoples as being less than human and thus "natural" slaves for civilized groups served as the justification for the forceful subjugation and enslavement of Amerindians in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries - a perspective spearheaded by the Spanish theologian Juan Cines de Sepúrveda (1489-1573). On the other hand. Bartolomé de las Casas, the bishop of Chiapas (ca. 1484-1566), argued for natives' humanity and civility and declared it unjust and sinful to enslave them and forcefully conven them to Christianity, as had been dont· in the early years of colonial rule. De tas Casas 's efforts were partially responsible tor the New Laws of 1542, in which the Grown prohibited Amerindian enslavement and other Spanish abuses against natives. For a penetrating examination, see Elisa Sampson Vera Tíldela, Colonial Angels; Narrativex of Gender ana Spirituality in Mexico 1580-1750 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 83.

21. Ibid., 84.

22. Foe penetrating and critical studies of these debates, see ibid., 76-97; Lavrin, The Bridex nf Christ, 255-68; and Díaz, Indigenous Writings, 42-62.

23. Uvrin, TAf Brides v/ Christ, 248-55.

24. Matt. 11:25, 18:1-7.

25. See Muriel, iMU indiai racüfues, 69-70, for a list of the names of the Ui-St indigenous nuns of Corpus Chrisli as well as transcriptions of the biographies of some of this convent's nuns.

26. Callagher, The Indian Nuns"; and Lavrin, The Brides of Christ, 255-68.

27. Díaz, Indigenous Writings, 85-109.

28. Lavrin, The Bridfs of Chris!. 255-74.

29. Sigüenza y Góngora, Paraíso occidental, 282-89.

30. For a concise discussion of this body of literature, setr Lavrin, Ttie Brides, of Christ, 248-55.

31. See Díaz, Indigenous Writings, 89- 1 10, for an examination of this anonymous manuscript.

32. Cited in Lavrin, The Uri/fa of Christ, 262.

33. Hammer, "Monjas Coronadas," 86, notes that Creole Families also demonstrated their honor and high social status in commissioning and exhibiting portraits of their religious daughters in their profession trappings.

34. The earliest dated profession portrait that 1 am aware of is that of Sor María de Guadalupe, a Jeronymite nun from the city of Puebla, which ivas painted by Juan Villalobos hi 1727 to commemorate her profession.

35. "Verdadero Retrato de la H"" Manuela de Meza, hija legítima de Don Lucas Meza y de Doña Anastacia Reinoso. Nació en 25 de Obre de 1809 en San Bartolomé jurisdicción de Capulhuac. Vistió nuestro santo abito en este conbenio de la Compañía de María Sma de Guadalupe y enseñanza de indias en 2 de julio de 1824 y profesó en 18 de marzo de 1827 siendo priora la M.R.M. María Luisa de Corral."

36. For the betrothal value of the carnation in Western art, see Roben A. Koch. "Flower Symbolism hi the Portinari Altar." Art Bulletin 46. no. 1 (March 1964): 73; and F. Mercier, "La valeur symbolique de l'oeillet dans la peinture du Moyen-Age," Revun <l?. l'Art ?t??? ff Moderne 81 (1937): 232ff. For the symbolic meaning of fans, see David R- Smith, Masks a/ Wedlock: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Marriage Portraiture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Research Press, 1982), 82.

37. "Retrato de Sebastiana Ynes Josepha de S" Äug"" Hija legíiima de D" Mathi" Alexo Martínez y de D"" Thomasa de Dios y Mendoza, de Edad de 16 años, del Año de 1757 años."

38. Javier Portas Pérez, "Varia fortuna del retrato en España," 17, 47, 50, and Nigel Glendinning, "Goya y el retrato del siglo XVIlI," 232-49, in El nimio español: Di-I (¿rere a Picasso, éd. Portas Pére/ Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2004).

39. Josefina Muriel, "EI convento de Corpus Christi," Anales del Instituto dt fnvestigaf.imt*s Estíticas 7 (1941): 37.

40. John P. Seward, Thr Symbolic /toc (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954). 12-13, 19.

41. For example, see Barragan M., "En la intimidad." 91: Vandenbroeck, Ix jardin clos de l'âme; and Perry, "Convents, An," 336.

42. Joaquín Antonio de Basarás, "Costumbre de indios y mapas de las generaciones, y algunas frutas de Nueva España, que carecen en la Europa," in Una visión del Mtxico fifi Siglo de lus Luces: La cadißcadan ríe Joaquín Antonio Ae Basarás, transcribed by Ilona Katzew (Mexico City: Landucci, 2006), 120-21. Also see Katzew's recapitulation of Basarás's narrative in Canta fainting: images of Knee in Eighteenth-Cat toay Mfxiro (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 172-74.

43. For a study on the origins of the "Indian nuptial" image in New Spain, see Katzew, Casia Painting, 174-79,

44. For example, in the Florentine Codex's volume on rhetoric and morality, Aztec noblewomen are admonished to be chaste and not commit adultery or indulge in licentious behavior. Bernardino de Saliagún, fiorentine Codex: (. renerai History of the Things of Neiv Spain, bk. 6, trans, and ed. Arthur J. O. Andersan and Charles Dibble (1580; Santa Fe: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 195082), 102,

45. Basarás, "Costumbres," 121.

46. Sahagún, f'ïorrntim Codex, bk. 6, 92-103. 216-18; bk. 10, 2-4. 12-13, 46-47.

47. Frank Graziano, Wounds oj' Love: The Mystical Marriage of Staat Rase of Lima (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 69.

48. According to the Apocrypha, in a competition of suitors for the Virgin Mary, God made known his choice for Saint Joseph by causing his staff to bloom. However, Joseph was not the only saintly figure to be pictured with a flowering staff in New Spain. Portraits of Juan Diego Bernardino - a Tlaxcalan native to whom (he Virgin of Ocotlan appeared - show him with a floral staff and a ruler's staff. Because his role as a mystic and eyewitness of the Virgin is based on that of Saint John the Apostle, who witnesses the apocalyptic woman in the Book of Revelation, his flowering staff probably indicates his virginity, as does Saint John's palm frond.

49. Sahagún, Hmntine Codex, bk. 2, 229-30.

50. The Counter-Reformation revitalized the cult of Saint Joseph and held him up as a model for married men and fathers. For a study of the image of Saint Joseph in early modern Spain and Latin America, see Charlen e Villaseñor Black, Creating the Cult of Saint Joseph: ArI ana Gender in tlie. Spanish Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006),

51. Motolinia, History of the Indians of New Spain, trans. Frances Borgia Steck (Washington, D, C.: Academy of Franciscan History. 1951), 143.

52. John Leddy Phelan, Tin- Millennial Kingdom of fite Frantisatns in the New ' World: A Study of the Writings of Gerfnim» de Menatela (1524-!6(H) (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1956).

53. Sahagún. Flarmtinf Codex, bk. 11, 214-15.

54. For example, indigenous lords held the macpaharhitl (Chiratitheodendmit pentadactylon, or tar de la matìhti) in high esteem and used it to adorn other flowers. Because it was an item imported into Tenochtttlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, it was especially desirable. Doris Heyden, Mitologia y simbntèama de la flora en el MSx ico prekiapanico (México: UNAM. 1983), 17, 49.

55. The full passage includes stereotyped characteristics of an Amerindian speaking Spanish, which accounts for imperfect spelling and syntax: "iOjalá que yo en mi tierra / lo estoviera! Lo cortara / de mi chinampa las rosas / para ponerlo a sos plantas; / lo hiciera un arco de toles, / y aún mas: que lo empetatara. / colgado de corazones / mío, de mi Pagre, y hermana, / un suntoeale. Y también / lo adornara con las ramas / de laurel, porque es valiente / lo Señor vigrey de mi alma; / de olivas con mil flores / corona y zúehil formara /ami Señora el Virreina, / porque lo es discreta y santa. . , ."; Joaquín de Barruclu y Arana, Halation del festejo q\te a las Mertftífsfa d? las Amarillas Its hicieron las Señoras ReKgwsas d»l Convnnl.ii de fian Jertìnimo, ed. Frederick Luciani, Biblioteca Indiana ( 1 756; Madrid: Iberoamericana; Frankfurt: Vervuert, 20.11).

56. Córdova, "Aztec Vestal Virgins," 211-12.

57. Unfortunately. I have come across no documentation that indicates who made nuns' floral trappings. It may be that nuns and/ or their servants and students made them inside convents, or perhaps some were made by aspiring nuns' families or their families' native servants and contacts.

58. Ana García Sanz and Leticia Sánchez Hernández, "Iconografía de monjas, santas, y beatas en los monasterios reales españoles," in IM mujer en el arte español (Madrid: Editorial Alpuerto, 1997), 132-39.

59. Far example, book 1 1 of the Florentine Codex identifies flora and fauna that were important for late pre-Hispanic and early colonial Central Mexican natives. Important colonial sources oudining Mesoamerican flora include the 1552 Herbalby Martín de la Cruz and Francisco Hernández's Naturai History ( 1576) . For more recent studies on this topic, see Jeanette Peterson, The Paradise Garden Murals of Malinaicn: Utopia and Empire in Sixteenlh-Century Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 83-102; Heyden, Mitología y simMáma; and IM euntcUt del paraíso: La flor en al arle mexicano (Mexico: INAH, 1998).

60. Antonio Lot and Ma. Guadalupe Miranda-Arce, "Nota sobre las interpretaciones botánicas de plantas acuáticas representadas en Códices Mexicanos," in Flora and Fauna Imagery in Precoîttmhian Cultures; iconography and Function /imágenes de. flora y fauna en· culturas Preadumbinrss: iomografìa y función, ed. Jeanette F. Peterson (Oxford: BAR, 1983), 85-92.

61. Heyden, Mitología y simiioltsmo, 16; and Peterson, Tlte Paradise Garden Murals, 100. In Mexico, the eempottbmchiu is still used to honor the dead on All Souls' Day, more commonly known as Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).

62. Petecson, 7'Af Paradise Garden Muraln, 85, 118,

63. The flowers of the goddess's headdress indicate her preciousness and association with flowers (her name also conveys this association: Xochiquetzal translates as "flower [or precious] quetzal bird").

64. Heyden, Mitaltigia y simbolismo, 101-2; Peierson, The Paradise (ïarden Murais, 109; and Mary Miller and Karl Taube, An Ilustrateti Dictionary o] tìw Gads and Symbols ofAiicutnt Mexico and the Maya (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993), 48.

65. Sanagli ? , Florentine Codex, bk. 3, 49. On dying, most people were sent io the smoky and dangerous underworld (Mictlan). Another afterworld, a kind of terrestrial paradise called Tlalocau, was resei-ved for those whose deaths were associated with water and individuals sacrificed to ihe rain god. Tlaloc. Sahagun, Florentine Codex, bk. 3, 47. See Alfredo López Austin, Tttntuanrkan, Tlalwan: Places of Mixt, trans. Bernard R. Orti/, de Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano (Niwot: University Press of Colorado. 1997), for an ??-depth study of Mesoarnerican concepts of creation, death, and paradise.

66. Karl Taube traces the flower world complex to the Olmec Middle Formative period (600-300 BCE). Taube, "Flower Mountain: Concepts of Life, Beauty, and Paradise among the Classic Maya," Res 45 (Spring 2004): 69. '

67. Jane Hill, "The Flower World of Old Uto-Aztecan," Journal of Anthropological Research 48 (1992): 117-44.

68. Taube, "Flower Mountain," 69-98.

69. Esther Pasztory cautions that although Aztec sources are helpful in reconstructing the art and culture of Teotihuacan, scholars should take care in applying the concepts and imagery of distinct groups Io each other. In linking these murals with Aztec concepts of paradise and the afterlife, 1 intend merely to identify broad religious traditions shared by ethnically and temporally disparate groups in Mesoamerica. Pasztory, Teotihuacan: An Exf/mwent in. Living (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 27.

70. Alfonso Caso, "El Paraíso Terrenal en Tcoiihuacan," in Cwitlernm Americanos fi, no, 6 (1942): 127-36, interpreted the scene as a depiction ofTlalocan. However, Salvador Toscano, Arie precolombina de Mexico y de la Amerira Centrai, 3rd ed. (Mexico City: UNAM, 1970)t 127, broadened that interpretation to Tlalocan-Tamoanchan, a reinlerpretation thai, according io López Austin, Tamaanchan, Tlaluran, 272, seems to be supported by the evidence.

71. Sahagun, florentin? Codex, bk. 3, 47.

72. Portilla, Aztec Thought muí Culture, 74-79.

73. Taube, "Flower Mountain," 78.

74. See López Austin. Tamoandtan, Tlaloran, "274. for a variety' of interpretations that have been applied to this work.

75. Il is generally accepted that the Aztec cult of warrior butterflies originated in Teotihuacan, in which images of warriors with butterfly wings abound. Taube, "Flower Mountain," 88.

76. George Ferguson, Sign-s and Symfioix in Christian Ari (N'ew York: Oxford University Press, 1961). 13.

77. Gerónimo Men die ta. Historia eclesiástica indiana (Mexico City: Editorial Porrua, 1980). 170.

78. For » compendium and interpretation of the Malinalco murals' flora and fauna, see Pcterson, The Paradise Garden Murals, 83-123.

79. Eleanor Wake, Framing the Sacred; The Indian Churches of Early Colonial Mexico (Norman; University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 249.

80. Louise Burkhart, "Flowery Heaven: The Aesthetics of Paradise in Náhuatl Devotional Literature," ßes 21 (Spring 1992): 89.

81. Ibid., 101.

82. I have come across only one instance in which a New Spanish nun wrote significantly about the meaning of her profession trappings. Her interpretation of each componen! is completely in line with the mystic nuptial theme, with which all nuns were familiar and which they had read aboiu in ihe saints' lives. Miguel de Torres, Vidn exemplar, y immrtf. preciosa rie ia madre Barbara Jostpha fle San Franeturo Religiosa tie vflo, y r.koro del commi» de la Santìssima Trinidad, de la Puebla de Los Angeles (Puebla, 1725), 132-34.

83. See Nuria Sala/ar Sìmarro for a list of (lora and ihe virtues they represent, compiled by Cayetano Antonio de Torres in his Directoría para novirids de este convento de Sun Phelipe dejtatùs in about 1 750. Salazar Simarro, "El lenguaje de las flores en la clausura femenina," in Mtmjes coronadas: Vida conventual femenina, 138. For a discussion of European and Asian flowers and their symbolism, see Ana Paulina Game/. M., "Las flores: Ornamentos obligado," in IM esencia del paraíso, 28-29.

84. Koch, "Flower Symbolism in the Portinari Altar," 71.

85. Frances Calderón de la Barca, Life in Mexico (1843; London: Century, 1987), 583-84. According to Ferdinand Anders, by the nineteenth century most Mexican feather works were intended as tourist souvenirs. Anders, cited in Esther Pasztory. Azlec Ari (Norman; University of Oklahoma Press. 1983), 278.

86. For a concise discussion of Aztec feather mosaics, see Pasztory, Alter A», 278-80. Also see Sahagun, florentine- Codfx, bk. 10. 93-97, for an account of how Aztec feather artisans accomplished their work. Other notable studies of viceregal Mexican feather mosaics are Elena Estrada ile Gcrìero, "La plumaria, espresión artística por excelencia," ia Mfxicii rn el munito de los colertinnex de arte·, vol. 1, Nueva España 1 (México City: UNAM, 1994), 73-118; Alcssandra Russo, "Plumes of Sacrifice: Transformations in Sixteenth-Century Mexican Feather Art," Res 42 (Autumn 2002): 226-50; and Alexandra Russo, Gerhard Wolf, and Diana Fane, Kl vuelo de las imágenes: Arte plumario en México y Europa/ Images Take Wight: Feather Art in Mexico and Europe (Mexico City: INBA and INAH, 2011),

87. Sahagun, Florentine Codex, bk. 10, 167.

88. Russo. "Plumes of Sacrifice," 239-40.

89. Ibid,

90. All extant escudos de monja are oil on metal (or occasionally parchment) objects or embroidered in silk and metallic threads on a cloth backing. Elizabeth Perry. "Escudos de monjas/ Sh i elds of Nuns; The Creole Convent and Images of Mexican Identity in Miniature" (PhD diss., Brown University, 1999), 12.

91. Perry, "Convents, Art," 332.

92. There is no documentation that singles out the embroidered escudos, Barragan M.. "En la intimidad," 93, notes that nuns' families donated their capes, but she does not identify the source on which she bases tliis statement. However, if that was the case, perhaps the laywomen in the nuns' families fabricated the escudos or hired others to make them,

93. Only Conceptionist, Jeronymite, and some Dominican nuns wore esmdos de monja. Perry, "Escudos de monjas," 1 2, no. 9. Indigenous women could enter only certain branches of the Franciscan order, and later the Company of Mary.

94. Claire Farago points out thai cultural traditions do not indicate their practitioners' ethnicity. George Kubler also argues as much when he opposes using the term "mestizo art" to identify colonial Mexican art iriat exhibits Mesoamerican artistic qualities because "it carries a burden of racial meaning." Farago, "Transforming Images: 'Managing the Interstices with a Measure of Creativity,' " in Transforming Ima/res: New Mexican Sanios m-oeítueen Worlds, ed, Farago and Donna Pierce (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 161; and Kubler, "On the Colonial Extinction of ihe Motifs of Precolumbian An," in The (.'.ollerted Essays of George Kubfa; ed. Thomas F. Reese (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 67.

95. Similarly, James Lockharl observes thai "whenever the two cultures (N'ahua and Spanish) ran parallel, ihe Nahuas would soon adopt the relevant Spanish form without abandoning the essence of their own form." Lockharl, The Nahuas ajter Ihe Cmnfuest: A Social and Cultural Hbitmy of the Indians af Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centurie* (Stanford. Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992). 243.

96. Ibid,, 445.

97. Kubler, "On the Colonial Extinction," 66.

98. Carolyn Dean and Dana Leibsohn, "Hybridity and Ils Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America," Colonial Latin American Review 12, no. 1 (2003): 14.

99. Ibid.

100. Farago, "Transforming Images," 159. In recent critical discussions on teaching and studying world art tupies, James Elkins, "Can We Invent a World Art Studies?" in World Art Sittdtes: Concepts and Approarhes, ed. Kilty Zijlmatis and Wilfred Van Damme (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2008); and David Summers, Real Spaces: World An and ike Rist· of Western Modemviin (New York: Phaidon, 2002), among others, have debated the necessity of utilizing either non-Western or more universal tenus and concepts to examine non-Western art and traditions. However, many of these arguments do not adequately acknowledge the heterogeneity of societies, tending instead to view them as autonomous and homogeneous entities. Recent postcolonial scholarship in the field of colonial Latin American art history have challenged this notion by examining ihe pluralism of Latin American societies and their cultural productions. For outstanding examples, see Thomas B. F. Cummins, "From Lies to Truth: Colonial Ekphrasis and the Act of Crosscultural Translation," in Keframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, i450-1650 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), 152-74; Farago and Pierce, Transforming images; Carolyn Dean, "The Trouble with the Term 'Art,' " Art Journalen, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 24-32; and idem, "The After-life of Inka Rulers: Andean Death before and after Spanish Colonization," in Death and the. AflvrUfe. in thf Early Modem. Hispanic World, ed. John Beusterien and Constance Corte?., Híspante issues On Line 7 (Fall 2(JIt)), http://hispanici5sues.umn.edu/ assets/doc/03_DEAN. pdf.

101. Dean and Leibsohn, "Hybridity," 26.

Author affiliation:

James M. Cordava is assistant professor of art history at the University of Coloi'ado at Boulder', where he teaches pre-Columbian and colonial Latin-American art. He is currently completing a book on religious portraiture and identity rhetorics in New Spain [Department of ArI and Art History, University of Colorado at Boulder, 318 UCB, Boulder, Col. 80309-0318.James.Cordova@colorado.edu].