arts Article Lady of the House: Augustina Meza (ca. 1758–1819), Print Publishing, and the Women of Mexican Late Colonial Art Kelly Donahue-Wallace Department of Art History, University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76203, USA;
[email protected] Abstract: Using archival records of the Sagrario Metropolitano and material analysis of extant prints, the paper presents the life and work of the only known woman printmaker in viceregal New Spain, María Augustina Meza. It traces Meza and her work through two marriages to fellow engravers and a 50-year career as owner of an independent print publishing shop in Mexico City. In doing so, the paper places Meza’s print publishing business and its practices within the context of artists’ shops run by women in the mid- to late-eighteenth century. The article simultaneously extends the recognized role of women in printing and broadens our understanding of women within the business of both printmaking and painting in late colonial Mexico City. It furthermore joins the scholarship demonstrating with new empirical research that the lived realities of women in viceregal New Spain were more complex than traditional, stereotypical visions of women’s lives have previously allowed. Citation: Donahue-Wallace, Kelly. Keywords: prints; print publishing; Mexico; painting; art business; viceregal; colonial 2021. Lady of the House: Augustina Meza (ca. 1758–1819), Print Publishing, and the Women of Mexican Late Colonial Art. Arts 10: 1. Introduction 12. https://doi.org/10.3390/ arts10010012 Complying with his annual duty to count the parishioners of Mexico City’s Sagrario Metropolitano, Father Joseph Félix Colorado walked the streets of the capital city’s central Received: 31 December 2020 district in the spring of 1770.