Castas Painting In the second half of the eighteenth century, fascination with the emerging mixed-race population of Spanish America gave rise to the genre of castas paintings, sets of sixteen families, each depicting a specific racial mixture. Here the painter has identified the mother as “Indian” and the father as a chino, a term referring to the offspring of a union between an Indian and an African.

(A Half-Breed and His Lobo Indian Wife and Their Child, Mexican [oil on canvas]/Museo de America, Madrid, Spain/Index/Bridgeman Images)