The life of Juan Correa bears witness to the complex social diversity that was being lived out in the New Hispanic viceroyalty; on the one hand, Juan Correa's parents attained quite a comfortable standard of living in the Calle Águila (currently a Cuban Republic section of the old historic centre of Mexico City), which allowed them to lend their son the 300 pesos it took to buy the freedom of his slave Tomasa Gutiérrez, and fifty pesos more for the freedom of her similarly enslaved grandson, while conversely, Juan Correa had a black slave woman of 50 years of age in his service, whom he sold towards the end of the seventeenth century. Not much is known about the artist's early life and adolescence. His earliest works date from the 1660s. On stylistic evidence, some scholars believe he was part of Antonio Rodríguez's studio, and although the exact date of Juan Correa's entry into the guild of painters and gilders is unknown, it was reported that that he took the master's exam alongside other contemporary painters of the class of 1687, in other words, when he was already 41 years old. Guild studios, like the painters and gilders, were the only places qualified to exercise different arts and offices. Each one of them relied on a brotherhood (a congregation with religious and social welfare aims) and their patron saint determined the ordinances which regulated the technical and religious criteria that had to govern the creation of works of art, conditions of sale and the knowledge and characteristics which those who aspired to be masters had to attain. Despite the restrictions imposed and issued by certain guilds towards the indigenous peoples, Africans and people of castes holding offices, their entry into these corporations as apprentices, officials and in some cases, masters, was inevitable.