Juan Correa

Juan Correa (1646–1716) was a distinguished Mexican painter of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. His years of greatest activity were from 1671 to 1716. He was the Afro-Mexican son of a mulatto (or dark-skinned) physician from Cádiz, Spain, and a freed black woman, Pascuala de Santoyo. Correa "became one of the most prominent artists in New Spain during his lifetime, along with Cristóbal de Villalpando." Manuel Toussaint considers Correa and Villalpando the main exponents of the Baroque style of painting in Mexico. James Oles writes that "Correa and Villalpando created a distinctive—if at times formulaic—style that hearkened back to the strong Mannerist traditions of the mid-sixteenth century."

Correa was a highly productive religious painter, with two major paintings in the sacristy of the Cathedral of Mexico City, one on the subject of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin (each from 1689), and the Entry into Jerusalem (1691). Elsewhere in the cathedral he created the Vision of the Apocalypse, and other versions of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. He also painted major works for the Jesuit church in Tepozotlan, Mexico (now the Museum of the Viceroyalty), the Chapel of the Rosary in the convent of Azcapotzalco (in Mexico City) and—based on models by ——for the cathedral of Durango. His last known work from the early 18th century was documented at Antigua, Guatemala, in 1739.

According to Toussaint, Correa was "important in achieving a new quality, in the creative impulse he expresses, and which one cannot doubt embodies the eagerness of New Spain for an art of its own, breaking away from its Spanish lineage. Here New Spain attains its own personality, unique and unmistakable."

Correa was the teacher of José de Ibarra and Juan Rodríguez Juarez. His brother, José Correa, his nephews Miguel Correa and Diego Correa, and his grandsons (also named Miguel and Diego) worked as painters.