From Courtesan to Saint

Abstract

This essay analyzes the viceregal Mexican artist Juan Correa’s painting The Conversion of St. Mary Magdalene, from the late seventeenth century. A depiction of a woman explicitly displaying traits of her sensuality and sexuality in a Mexican viceregal artwork, the painting visually conveys symbolic embodiments of the feminine condition. These embodiments refer to religious penitence, self-reflection, mysticism, and the vita contemplativa. Moreover, I examine the episodic nature of the painting, associating it with feminine devotional practices. The painting’s pictorial configuration apparently relates to the Jesuit theological tradition, specifically to the spatial and embodied representations expressed in the engravings contained in the Adnotationes et meditationes in evangelia (1595), by Jerónimo Nadal. The essay underscores how Correa represented, spatially, a series of notions related to feminine affections, sensibilities, religiosity, and spirituality. Finally, this investigation puts forward the thesis that the painting, as an artifact, prompted devotional prayer, fostering notions such as penitence and self-reflection, and aiming to help its worshippers achieve reformatio or spiritual conversion.