Alacena [Cupboard]

During the colonial period painters also approached worldly subjects, painting portraits and even decorating everyday objects. Cupboards like this one were a key part of dining room furnishings, varying in materials and decoration to adapt to different homes in the Americas. This example is one of the few extant painted cabinets from colonial Venezuela. It is attributed to Juan Pedro López, the most prolific eighteenth-century painter active in Caracas, a city that at that time was a key trading center of the Spanish Atlantic world.