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Josefa de Ayala and the Penitent Magdalen: 'Huma suavidade que me cercava toda'

2022; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/port.2022.0001

2222-4270

Jean Andrews,

Historical Art and Architecture Studies

Josefa de Ayala and the Penitent Magdalen:'Huma suavidade que me cercava toda' Jean Andrews Abstract This article examines Josefa de Ayala's (1630–1684) late oil on copper painting, The Penitent Magdalen Comforted by Angels (Private Collection) in relation to female devotional culture in seventeenth-century Iberia, taking into account mysticism and quietism, the restrictions placed on the work of a painter of religious iconography and Josefa's own singular status as a donzela emancipada, effectively managing her own financial affairs as a single woman. Resumo Este artigo examina a pintura tardia em óleo sobre cobre de Josefa de Ayala (1630–1684), Maria Madalena Confortada pelos Anjos (em posse privada), em relação com a cultura feminina devocional na Península Ibérica do século XVII, tomando em conta o misticismo e o quietismo, as restrições impostas à obra de uma pintora de iconografia religiosa, e a própria posição singular de Josefa como donzela emancipada, assumindo o controle dos seus próprios assuntos financeiros como mulher solteira. Keywords Josefa de Ayala, devotional culture, religious art, Mary Magdalen Palavras-chave Josefa de Ayala, cultura devocional, arte religiosa, Maria Madalena Josefa de Ayala e Cabreira (1630–1684) was Portugal's only professional woman painter of the seventeenth century. Renowned in her own lifetime, and even more so in the centuries after her death (as Josefa de Óbidos), she is now recognized as the most significant Portuguese pictorial artist of the seventeenth century. She was born in Seville to the Portuguese painter, Baltazar Gomes Figueira (1604–1674) and an Andalusian mother of hidalgo stock, Catalina Camacho de Cabrera, and remained in the household of her maternal grandfather, Juan de Ortiz de Ayala, for some years after her parents moved to Portugal.1 As a teenager, she is believed to have spent about three years as a pupil, but probably not a postulant, at two different convents in Coimbra, the Augustinian convent of Santa Ana (1644–47) and then, briefly, the Cistercian convent of Santa Maria de Celas.2 After this, she returned to the family home in Óbidos and, with her father's blessing, began to build a career as a painter. By the age of twenty-nine she had become so successful as a painter, investing her earnings in property and farmland, that she was able to set up house on her own with two servants. To achieve this highly unusual degree of financial and social independence, she obtained from her parents the legal right to be designated a donzela emancipada [emancipated maiden]. This status, unique to Portugal, bestowed on unmarried women financial and legal rights equivalent to those of a widow.3 Though very little is known about Josefa's private life, she does seem to have been a devout woman. The chief documentary evidence of this is in her last will and testament, the only extant document in which Josefa's voice may be heard, however mediated by convention and the intervention of a confessor. In it, she commends herself on her deathbed to the Blessed Virgin, St Joseph and St Catherine of Alexandria 'para que com o Anjo da minha guarda e os mais Santos da Corte do Ceo […] e as onze mil Virgens para que todos me alcancem [End Page 25] da divina Mizericordia perdão de meus peccados e que minha alma seja levada a sua gloria' [so that, with my guardian angel and the other saints of the Court of Heaven […] and the eleven thousand virgins, they may all obtain for me from Divine Mercy pardon for my sins and that my soul may be raised to glory].4 This expression of piety is relevant because it is by no means a given that all painters of religious art were by definition devout. It was also a necessary counterbalance to the extraordinary financial and civil independence she obtained, because without a reputation for piety it would have been scandalous for a young unmarried woman to head her own household. The early modern female devout were as much in need of saintly role models as their male counterparts, but the repertoire they had to choose from was severely limited...