“In this highly readable book, Solari sets the Virgin Mary within the firmament of the Maya sacred cosmos. As epidemics ravaged the peoples of colonial Yucatan, statues of Mary came forward to absorb evil afflictions. Mary borrowed this capacity, as Solari makes clear, from the very Maya deity images that were dismissed as ‘idols’ by Catholic evangelizers. Offering a Maya ideology of images, Solari’s book adds to the growing decolonizing project of current art histories.”
—Barbara E. Mundy, author of The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City