While most casta paintings represent racially mixed couples with their children, this canvas depicts a morisca (a woman of African descent identified by her characteristic overblouse) and her albino child. Thought to descend only from people of African origin, albinos elicited endless fascination on both sides of the Atlantic, leading to all sorts of bizarre theories about their ability to reproduce, or whether their bodies proved how mixed individuals could eventually revert to the so-called original whiteness of humankind (that is, of “blood mending”). Paintings such as this would have spurred speculation about the increasingly mixed population of the Americas and its habits, including widespread tobacco use among women. (Note the cigarette case held by the mother.)
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