Source: Dawn Ades, Art in Latin America . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989, p. 32.
Image: "Columbus Before the Catholic Monarchs", Juan Cordero, 1850. Oil on canvas in the Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City.
Comments: Here you see Fernando and Isabel (los Reyes Católicos) featured in light in the center of the canvas. Columbus is dressed as a scholar and courtier is center-left. In the shadows in the lower left are native Americans being presented to the monarchs. Cordero has observed all academic norms in designing this painting.
Questions: Identify the painting's style. What elements does the painter use to characterize the idea of this specific Spanish colonial historical reality? Which is more important according to this view, American reality or European reality?