Spain not only brought soldiers and priests to America, but also artists, painters, sculptors and architects. All of whom introduced to the New World models, themes and techniques fashionable in Europe at the time, they created workshops and taught their skills to half breeds and natives. Thus, since the end of the Seventeenth Century and during all of the Eighteenth Century, a Colonial art flourished which to all intents and purposes, was a combined art: the Spaniards contributed their religion and all their traditions and techniques and the natives, on their part, their attachment to the land, their fantasies and ancestral rites.

In ancient times, the art of the continent was characterized for its native or pre columbian roots and in colonial times, for the combination of both cultures: local and European. Later, without losing its native identity, the art was influenced by western cultures, such as Spanish, French and Italian, as well as the movements that emerged from the so called Old World.

In America, paintings and sculptures are fundamentally religious, as the conquest of the New World was not conceived as an undertaking for mere political and economic expansion, but more as a crusade of spiritual and religious conversion. And art played a fundamental role in this objective. This is because the pagan natives that lived in these lands could not read or write and the communication means we have today were not available. Painted or sculpted images were used to instruct the natives in the Catholic faith and the life of the saints.

American painters and sculptors were especially fond of the martyrdom of the saints and the moments of Christ's Passion, "because, in these scenes, they could intensify and exaggerate the sense of pain and suffering to extremes unknown in Spain", remarked the historian Isabel Cruz in her book ''The Best in the History of Chilean Painting and Sculpture''. In the author's opinion, Colonial religious paintings and sculptures are always steeped with transcendence and supernatural feeling. They are a permanent invitation to meditate on the eternal destiny of man. "Because, in contrast to modern art, which is almost completely alien to religious themes and sentiments, there is a permanent sense of the miraculous floating in Colonial art, the reflection of a profoundly devout society, that lives with one foot on earth and the other in heaven".