Barbara Mundy (Fordham University) opens this volume with a thought-provoking discussion of pre-Columbian dance festivals and their associated costumes and accoutrements, their continuation and reinterpretation in colonial Mexico, and their remaining vestiges in modern times. Gustavo Curiel (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico) presents a moving discussion of the mourning activities performed in Mexico City in 1666 to commemorate the death of Philip IV; Curiel then reconstructs a vision of the ephemeral monument erected by the Inquisition by comparing documentary sources, such as the artist's contract, with surviving engravings of a similar monument.
Frances Ramos (University of South Florida) brings the volume into the eighteenth century by examining celebrations and art in honor of Saint Joseph in the city of Puebla, Mexico. Beatriz Berndt (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico) continues the festival theme by analyzing extant engravings, written descriptions, and political motivations in the ephemeral facade designed to celebrate the enthronement of Charles IV in Mexico City in 1789. Kelly Donahue-Wallace (University of North Texas) closes the festival section with a discussion of ephemeral structures and related public art works under the direction of the newly founded Royal Academy of Art of San Carlos in the late colonial era.
Jorge Rivas begins the discussion of daily life by presenting recent research on a uniquely American furniture form, the butaca (easy) chair, tracing its origins in Venezuela and its eventual spread throughout pan-Caribbean Latin America. Susan Socolow closes the volume with an examination of women's quotidian clothing in colonial Argentina based on documentary evidence found in travelers' descriptions and extant estate inventories.
An interdisciplinary study bringing together new research on an understudied era and area, this well-illustrated volume will be an important resource for scholars and enthusiasts of early modern history in general and Latin American art and history in particular.
