Like the overture to a symphony, an enormous 10-panel painted screen at the entrance to Winterthur's "The Grandeur of Viceregal Mexico" introduces the themes of the show. Painted in the late 17th century, the front panels depict a sequence of battles and fiery destruction in Mexico City (Tenochtitlán), which appears in the same configuration on the reverse side of the screen. Under molded gilt arcades, descended from Moorish architecture in Spain, the panels show Hernán Cortés sailing into Tenochtitlán where he is welcomed by Moctheza, who is stoned to death in a subsequent vignette. Important episodes and people in the conquest are identified by number in an elaborate cartouche in one corner.

These events are not the subject of the exhibition, but three centuries of art enjoyed by the conquistadors' criollo descendants' is. It is a chapter of Mexican history that is seldom acknowledged in the U.S. -- when arrogant criollos lived privileged lives amongst objects honoring Spanish religion and values, as they expressed a more complex aesthetic heritage.

Step into the exhibition and around the screen to see its anonymous painter's representation of a contemporaneous rebuilt Mexico City. Though satisfying from a distance, the panorama is more pattern than painting, a fantasy of the capital of New Spain. Laid out in a grid pattern with a central square, several identifiable buildings still stand, including the one now housing the Museo Franz Mayer, the source of this impressive show.

This screen would have been displayed in the reception rooms of wealthy criollos, offspring of alliances between the conquistadors and native Mexican women. Such families of mixed background documented their entitlement to power though works like this. Even as Spain suffered prolonged economic reverses, the new world provided criollos with fantastic riches: silver mines, jewels and an ostentatious lifestyle.

According to Gustavo Curiel's catalog essay, less than a decade after the pilgrims of the Mayflower landed in Plymouth harbor, elite criollo women habitually dressed in so many layers of lace and jewels that they had to be conveyed in sedan chairs to their carriages. Both men and women paraded in the park attended by up to a dozen richly dressed African slaves.

What one might have imagined as an unsophisticated colonial outpost was in fact a cosmopolitan culture, located at the hub of trade with Europe and Asia and privy to the latest styles. Asian influences are beautifully represented in the exhibition through the inclusion of blue and white Chinese export porcelain. Even the screen depicting the conquest is identified as a biombo, a Spanish transliteration of the Japanese word for folding screen.

Through the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, skilled artisans of metal, wood, fiber and paint brought local techniques and aesthetics to bear on European styles. Baroque, rococo and neoclassical objects acquire curious, often charming nuances in the work of New Spain, with occasional injections of indigenous imagery. This is the case with a pair of Aztec heads that appear on the knees of the cabriole legs of an armchair in which an image of St. Anne is seated. In a pair of wonderful Chippendale chairs and a bench, the translation of style injects an extravagant sense of mass and motion.

The anonymous Portrait of an Indian Lady, Daughter of a Cacique (1757) may be the finest painting in the exhibition. The 16-year-old was painted on the occasion of her entrance into a convent, a record of her family's "gift" of a daughter to the church, but more importantly, of the riches with which they could afford to adorn her. The eclectic ensemble of native dress with European and Asian accessories includes a fan, jewelry, lace and heavy pearl embroidery on her sleeves, all brilliantly rendered. The picture speaks to us through the young woman's simplicity of expression. Her innocence transcends worldly trappings, as it should, since she wears this finery for the last time.

Numerous polychrome religious figures, most carved from wood, include a graceful Virgin Mary with the Christ Child from Spain (1550-1600). Though the frontal is almost Gothic, Mary presents the child formally; he leans his head back to look at her face with a charming natural baroque gesture. A later, rather naive figure of St. Michael wielding a sword was made of crushed corn husks ground into a papier-mache-like paste, producing a lightweight portable statue.

St. James waving an iron sword has a realistic face and armor rendered in the popular estafado technique, in which gold leaf is over-painted and scratched through in elaborate patterns. But the saint's horse was seemingly made by another, less accomplished hand.

This exhibition is complex and subtle. It will be best appreciated by those who are already knowledgeable about furniture, woodworking, metalsmithing (there are many beautiful liturgical and practical objects, including fine cocoa cups), textiles or ceramics. Signage in the exhibition should be more extensive, though it is in both English and Spanish. The handsome catalog (also in both languages) offers much more insight into this complex chapter of Mexican social and artistic history.

The Grandeur of Viceregal Mexico: Treasures from the Museo Franz Mayer, through Jan. 12, Winterthur: An American Country Estate, Route 52 (Kennett Pike), Winterthur, Del., 302-888-4600