At the present time there is much interest both in factual history and in the history of the ideas which motivated these facts. This might be the justification, for instance, of so many monographs which are now appearing in many countries about the religious motives which gave impulse to great reforms.

The Spanish enterprise of the Indies has already been the subject of such studies, both from the point of view of Spanish thinkers and writers or from the standpoint—much less frequent—of the “Indianos” or Americans themselves.

The well organized Inca nation of Peru yielded to the Spanish quest for precious metals and mission fields. The new Indian subjects, having developed stable economic and political nationhood before the conquest, were accustomed to work and amenable to organization. Out of this substance, a colonial state could be moulded to make a substantial contribution to the Spanish purposes.

Spaniards readily rationalized that precious metals were material rewards for the missions' spiritual ambitions; conquest itself had precedents both among the Romans and the Incas, but Spain's Christianity gave her even greater justification.

The religious painting of Ecuador started very early. In fact, the first Franciscan friars who accompanied the conquistadores brought the visual arts to this new territory. Fr. Jodoco Ricke de Marselaer, with another priest, Fr. Pedro Goseal, or Gosseal, founded a school of art in 1534.

In 1553 this school was raised by Fr. Francisco de Morales to the category of a college with the title of Colegio de San Andrés. In this school, until its extinction in 1675, a great part of the painters of the región were educated, not only Indians but also Creoles.

The three main influences which molded this Quito school of painting were the following: It was born under the Flemish style at the Franciscan school of San Andrés; then it was influenced by the Spanish painting of the second half of the sixteenth century, and lastly it absorbed the teachings of two Italian masters. The influence of these three currents was felt in various ways: the Flemish appeared through the first Franciscans and through the engravings they constantly used in the composition of paintings; the Spanish appeared more directly in the style of the paintings themselves, and the Italian current, the last and most powerful, was the one which triumphed in all of America at the beginning of the seventeenth century.