From the moment of its supposed “discovery,” Europeans struggled to understand the Indies as place, a space embedded in networks of social and historical relations and reproduced through imaginative geography. Ilona Katzew’s book, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico, derives from and examines visual examples of this tradition of imaginative geography. As with all geographies, this book is formed as a journey with an itinerary that guides the viewer/reader through both visual and textual material in an effort to examine the historical and social topography reproduced through cuadros de casta or casta paintings, a secular genre of painting that depicts Spaniards, Indians, Africans, and their mixed-blooded offspring who inhabited eighteenth-century New Spain. This densely illustrated study (there are 270 images, many half or full-page, within the 204-page text) is an exploration of an imaginative geography that fashioned eighteenth-century New Spain as place. In a brief introduction, Katzew outlines the background, premises, and major questions of her study, proposing that casta paintings produced in the earlier part of the eighteenth century stress the prosperity of New Spain and colonial self-pride, while later works place focus on social stratification and New Spain’s commercial resources. Chapter 1, “Painters and Painting: A...