Politicians are sparring over colonial history in Latin America

WHEN SHE was young, Constanza de Luxán moved from Vizcaya in northern Spain to Peru, where in 1668 she married a colonial official. Later she had her portrait painted dressed in black with Spanish lace ruffs. But she is kneeling on a luxurious carpet of brightly coloured geometric design derived from pre-Columbian Peruvian culture. The painting hangs in “Tornaviaje” (Return Journey), a thought-provoking exhibition at the Prado museum in Madrid, whose subject is the art produced in Spanish America from the 16th to the 18th centuries. It argues that this art, in the words of an 18th-century Spanish friar, featured “Spanish forms dressed in American clothing” and thus formed part of a culture of mestizaje (mixing).