This article deals with the subject of 16th century Mexican monastic architecture and its artistic embellishments. Its aim is to present the architecture and its decoration program within an appropriate historical context, putting a particular emphasis on the process of cultural transmission and subsequent changes between the Old and the New World. Some attention is also paid 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 America, albeit it stresses that the process of cultural transmission was reciprocal.