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One of the elements that best characterize Botero's paintings is his ability to combine his original Latin-American culture, as nourished by the penchant for the hyperbolic and the fantastic, with the European one in an outstanding manner. Europe is obviously referred to the masters like Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Leonardo, Mantegna, Velázquez, Goya, Dürer, Rubens, Manet and Cézanne who were the key reference points during his travels in Italy and Spain in the early 50s.

The history of art is a broad and practically unlimited hoard of images to be ransacked but not imitated. Botero does not imitate: He thus recreates their spirit after many centuries by presenting them in contemporary terms and by aligning them to his original idea in terms of volume, space, sign and color.