Pictorial art started to develop in the Viceroyalty of New Spain with the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century, with Friar Pedro de Gante founding the San José Belén de los Naturales school in Mexico City, which would subsequently teach art and artisan crafts to the first indigenous, mestizo and criollo artists and artisans of New Spain, with notable figures including Juan Gerson (16th century), who was one of the first native artists trained in these art schools, leaving a valuable artistic legacy that has survived to the present day. Their purpose was the dissemination of the Catholic faith, largely through religious images created to that very end. Over the following centuries countless art schools would be founded, producing some extraordinary artists whose works both thrill and astonish the spectator in their quality and beauty. Artists arriving from Europe influenced the painters that were emerging in the Americas, and as the years went by these homegrown artists began to find their own style and identity with a markedly localized character.