These images come from late eighteenth-century Mexico.

Each sequence of 16 paintings is by an unknown artist; the first dates from around 1780, the second from around 1790.

By this time many conventions of the casta pictorial genre were firmly established, yet each artist creates his own distinctive version.

Compare and contrast these two series of paintings: what do they share? How are they different? What is the artist in each set "saying"? What kinds of visual assertions is he making?