The author reflects on the active and conscious situation of colonial painters in New Spain with a study that discovers and recognizes the art of colonial painting as "liberal and noble", contrary to the general perception that it was artisan and that artists never questioned the historic context around them. The book is an interpretation of selected pictorial works by Baltasar de Echave, Juan Correa, Miguel Cabrera, Cristobal de Villalpando and others that better express this concept in a comprehensive analysis of the literary and documental references that fundament that the artistic profession was worthy of admiration and that there was a social conscious of the dignity of the artist's work.