Mission paintings and painted sculpture of the Spanish and Mexican eras.

The missions had magnificent paintings of their namesakes and are reproduced here in color with their stories.

In 18th-century Spain, daring stories of missionaries spreading the Gospel in the New World ignited the imagination of a devout young boy. Miguel Serra's dream soon became a reality. As Franciscan friar Junípero Serra, he traveled to the New World and tirelessly preached the love of Christ to the natives living in the uncharted wilderness of California. Join the "founding father of California" on his amazing journey. Experience the zeal of the saint who established the first nine Catholic missions in California, from San Diego to San Francisco.

Saints and Citizens is a bold new excavation of the history of Indigenous people in California in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, showing how the missions became sites of their authority, memory, and identity. Shining a forensic eye on colonial encounters in Chumash, Luiseño, and Yokuts territories, Lisbeth Haas depicts how native painters incorporated their cultural iconography in mission painting and how leaders harnessed new knowledge for control in other ways. Through her portrayal of highly varied societies, she explores the politics of Indigenous citizenship in the independent Mexican nation through events such as the Chumash War of 1824, native emancipation after 1826, and the political pursuit of Indigenous rights and land through 1848.

Accurate renderings of 21 structures: San Diego de Alcalá, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Clara de Asís, San José de Guadalupe, Santa Cruz, many more, plus realistic vignettes of mission life. Captions.

Mission San Luis Rey de Francia was founded in 1798. The largest of the 21 California missions, it is nicknamed the King of the Missions. By 1811, the mission population has grown so large that a bigger church was needed. There were also many buildings outside of the mission quadrangle, including storehouses, solders’ barracks, mills, tanneries, workshops, and many of the locals’ homes. The content provided in this book, aligned to California state standards, will provide students with a greater insight into the story of San Luis Rey de Francia and California’s mission system. This book is filled with excellent primary source materials and visuals, including illustrations, paintings, and maps.