José Joaquín Magón, pintor poblano: La Santa Pulqueria

Another devotional painting by Magón with unusual subject matter is called La Santa Pulqueria (Pulcheria)*—a work commissioned for the Jesuit college of the Holy Spirit, now in the collection of the University Museum in Puebla.
   The back story to this complex painting lay in the aftermath of the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon in 1756, when Magón’s patron, Bishop Pantaleón Álvarez Abreu, ordered prayers and processions to avert similar catastrophes in Puebla, of which this work was to be a part.
   The pious Byzantine empress Pulcheria was the cofounder of Hagia Sophia basilica in Constantinople. Here she is represented holding the Church, with her family— husband of convenience Marciano, her three virgin sisters, her brother Emperor Theodosius II and her rival and sister-in-law Eudocia—and crushes heretics beneath her feet. The saint’s association with earthquakes, however, is not clear.
   It is also a puzzle that Magón, a painter who worked with such dedication to the Carmelites, agreed to paint one of his most important works for the Society of Jesus, a staunch enemy of the Order at the time.
*Although the saint is generally known as Pulcheria—a reference to her beauty—the Spanish spelling of the saint’s name, Pulqueria, more popularly refers in Mexico to a drinking house where pulque, the alcoholic maguey beverage is consumed.

Text © 2018 Richard D. Perry

color image © Tacho Juárez Herrera