Genres of painting, painting genres: towards a new reading of Casta Painting

Abstract

The goal of this article is to propose an interpretative strategy for Casta Painting as a genre painting case. Discussing several bonds between Ancien Régime rhetorics and genre painting developments, the article pays specific attention to Aristotle’s categories and Prime Modernity rhetors prescriptions for Satire and Comedy, we focus on the figure disposition on pictorial surface as a rhetoric example of image composition. Finally, the article pays attention to rhetoric resources identified in José Joaquín Magón’s most discussed casta painting series in Museo de Historia Mexicana de Monterrey, Mexico.