El Camino Real means the “royal road” and it was a term that designated all roads built by the Spanish kings in Spain and in the New World domains. One of those roads connecting Mexico City and Santa Fe evolved into the first and longest Spanish viceregal road in North America. Originally, a series of Indian footpaths linking the Mesoamerican world with the Rio Grande Pueblo Indian trails, were known locally, during the conquest period, as El Camino de tierra adentro— the road to the interior.

Evangelization and the missionary work developed along the Camino Real. The first Franciscan missionaries arrived in the city of Mexico in 1524, followed by the Dominicans in 1526, and the Augustinians around 1533. The arrival of the Jesuits in 1572 forced the Franciscans to move northward into the areas of Querétaro and surrounding New Galicia. The Franciscan Colegio Apostolico de Propaganda Fide de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas was the major missionary distribution center of art in New Spain. Sacred imagery traveled up the Camino Real and along a network of connecting roads that linked the missions in present-day New Mexico, California, Arizona and Texas.

The Franciscan missionaries established colonies in the early years of the seventeenth century along the Rio Grande and quickly started the evangelization process and the building of self-sufficient missions. The friars brought with them new technologies such as blacksmithing, weaving, and European methods of cultivation and introduced new crops. Many friars also brought liturgical accessories including priestly vestments and church furnishings such as sacred vessels, paintings and statues. From the native population they learned the most suitable building technology for the region. The Camino Real made possible the blending of Native American and Spanish cultures which resulted in a hybrid art in New Spain. The traditional European painting imposed upon Native American painting surface of buffalo and elk hide was a departure from the wood and canvas supports from viceregal Mexico.

European religious images reached the New World through academic paintings and prints and were copied in successive generations, again by non-trained artists who had little access to originals and learned their trade from artists following European traditions. The repetition of the subject with little variation preserved the primary objective of the icon as intermediary between the material and the spiritual worlds. Spain, England, and Germany were probably the first suppliers of tin-plate to the New World, but by the late eighteenth century Spain was the sole supplier of tin to Mexico. However, by 1830 sheets of tin-plate were manufactured for commercial purposes in Mexico.

The areas of retablo production and pilgrimage sites mentioned above are illustrated in the Spanish North America map engraved in 1814 by John Thomson, encompassing all territories from the Great Salt Lake to the northern part of Guatemala. It is based on the great Humboldt map of Mexico using Pinkerton’s version of Spanish holdings in North America and published in his New General Atlas in 1817. The map also includes interesting new information about the Texas area, here named “San Luis Potosí.”