"When the title of this book announces a review of 3,500 years of Colombian art, the question immediately arises: does Colombia have that much art to review? This beautiful and delightfully illustrated edition seems to indicate so. In a chronological unfolding, Santiago Londoño Vélez, its author, brings together here, for the first time, artistic manifestations developed in Colombian territory—from before the Discovery to the end of the 20th century—based primarily on the collection of the Museo del Oro and the Art Collection, both belonging to the Banco de la República. Starting from pre-Hispanic production, with outstanding examples from its principal worlds, the book moves forward toward the moving colonial legacy and its devout religious themes. It continues through the Expedición Botánica, Independence, the Comisión Corográfica, landscape painting, and portraiture, arriving at the 20th century and, with it, all the modes of the creative rite—“ruptures, searches, and encounters; projections and absorptions; idealizations and innovations”—and the definitive insertion of Colombian artists into universal visual art."