Samuel Edgerton has collaborated with photographer Jorge Pérez de Lara to produce a compelling book on the large mission complexes (conventos) in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century colonial Mexico. A chance trip to Mexico in 1987 introduced Renaissance scholar Edgerton to Mexico’s rich artistic and architectural heritage, and he quickly immersed himself in its study. Bringing his extensive knowledge of medieval and Renaissance European history, philosophy, theology, art, and architecture to bear on this topic, Edgerton offers a provocative approach to colonial Mexican art and architecture in a field that is entering a period of substantive growth. His primary purpose is to emphasize the collaborative, even reciprocal, nature of the architectural and artistic enterprise between European mendicant friars and Indian artisans in colonial Mexico, and to make the results of that enterprise better known to North Americans. Pérez de Lara’s numerous eye-catching photographs make the conventos’ art and architectural beauty readily apparent. Written in a lively, engaging, almost conversational tone, the book’s overarching themes are the European friars’ use of what Edgerton terms “expedient selection”: the impact of the introduction of Renaissance illusionism, and the creative, theatrical deployment of art and architecture to effect the desired outcome of conversion. Built by indigenous...