The name of the Dominican friar, Padre José María Vargas, is well-known in the literary and artistic centres of Ecuador, and especially in its capital, the ancient city of “San Francisco de Quito”. The work which we here consider is not the first that has come from his facile pen, prolific in production and classic in style. In 1941 he published the interesting survey entitled: La Cultura del Quito Colonial wherein the author, with abundant information and calm investigation, places before the eyes of the reader the Old Quito of Colonial days, that Quito which, despite its secondary political importance during the Spanish regime, was a centre of intellectual and especially of artistic culture of the first order. Its culture was not dammed up within the confines of the city, but rather, like one of these quiet and peaceful little rivers of tranquil waters that fructify far-off lands, it overflowed into the cities of the viceroyalties of New Granada and Peru. For such was the city of San Francisco de Quito: an enormous workshop where the plastic arts were widely cultivated and where colonial artists, both the famous and the nameless, gave themselves up entirely to the pursuit of their art.