Abstract
This article deals with the subject of the 16th century Mexican monastic architecture and its artistic decoration. The aim of the given paper is to present the architecture and its decoration program within the appropriate historical context putting particular emphasis on the process of cultural transmission and subsequent changes between the Old and New World.
Partial attention will be paid also to the European art of the modern age with regard to the discovery of America and its impact on the western worldview (imago mundi). The article concludes that the Mexican culture represents an example of a very successful and vivid translation of western culture (translatio studii) towards the West albeit it stresses that the process of cultural transmission was mutual.