Diego Rivera’s art was shaped by Mexican socialist politics and the Mexican Renaissance, which sought to revive the country’s Indigenous cultures and traditions as a means of unifying its national identity. Rivera drew artistic inspiration from his personal collection of more than 59,000 pre-Hispanic art objects, the largest in Mexico to represent works by the Olmecs, Toltecs, Nahuas, and Zapotecs, and by the people of Teotihuacan and northeastern Mexico. He housed the collection in Anahuacalli, a Mayan Revival museum inscribed on the portal, “I give back to my people that which they can rescue from the artistic legacy of their ancestors.”

Although Rivera is best known for his large-scale, often government-sponsored, mural projects, a significant source of his income was derived from painting commissioned portraits. Partly inspired by the early Italian Renaissance frescoes of Giotto, Rivera’s interest in simplified fields of color and boldly contoured forms is apparent in his rendering of Izetta Jewel Smith Watkins’s strong features and solid physique.