In her essay for the monumental catalogue accompanying the exhibition The Arts in Latin America, 1492–1820, Clara Bargellini writes, “The mere thought of attempting to comprehend in some sort of unified way all of the art, or even only the painting of colonial Latin America, provokes a sense of exhaustion” (322). Whereas most recent exhibitions of colonial art have taken what curator Joseph Rishel calls a “vertical” approach by focusing on a single nation, this exhibition and its accompanying catalogue aim for horizontal coverage, addressing the Spanish viceroyalties and the Portuguese colony of Brazil. The material likewise transcends boundaries between high art and craft, presenting the broad viceregal visual culture. The results are an exhibition—or better said, exhibitions, as the pieces at each venue varied—assembled from works housed today in sixteen nations in Europe and the Americas, and a catalogue contributed to by fifty-five authors similarly spread throughout three continents. In his preface, Rishel calls the exhibition and its catalogue a “completely synthetic experiment, an attempt to step back and view three hundred years of art-making over a vast geographic area.” The show aimed for a “different perspective” that permitted “reflections on the importance of the works of art on...