We will likely never know when or how Inés de Villalobos, a free mulata in 16th-century Veracruz, obtained the image of Saint Martha to which she prayed and for which she was punished. We know only that this woman of mixed African and European descent went to great lengths to protect it. Inés took pains to hide Saint Martha’s image, and it survives today, but under a different guise than Inés intended. In 1592 the Holy Office of the Inquisition in New Spain accused Inés of practicing hechicería (sorcery) to control the free will of men—in this case, her abusive husband and her secret lover. Inquisitors confiscated Inés’s watercolor and lodged it among the pages of her dossier, transforming the object of unruly domestic devotion into a regulated archival document.

My project reads against the inquisitors’ aim to freeze Inés’s watercolor and repress her spiritual practices. Instead, I use Inés’s artwork, and others, to uncover the broader sociohistorical networks that brought Martha images and devotions into being. Period documentation reveals that hundreds of other women, if not more, across the Iberian Atlantic invoked Martha to pursue needs and desires that fell outside of—and often challenged—Catholic orthodoxy. Portrayals of Martha taming a man-eating beast (tarasca) proved central to these devotions, with three examples that survive to this day in Inquisition archives: one in Mexico, the other two in the Canary Islands. These images, however, serve as the face of a much broader treasure trove of devotional artworks, with many more described and mentioned in Inquisition records. I approach these images as counter-archives that grant insight into how everyday women of different social and racial backgrounds experienced and manipulated sacred art in ways that inquisitors tried—but failed—to erase.

My argument gains momentum across four chapters centered on a single theme. Chapter 1, “Prayer,” examines the incantations women recited to Saint Martha. I demonstrate that devotees possessed sophisticated knowledge of both Saint Martha’s biblical persona (as “holy hostess”) and her medieval legend (as “tamer of the tarasca”). An analysis of the performances and materials accompanying such practices reveals how devotees imitated and embodied Martha’s monster-taming power as a means to reclaim their sexual and spiritual autonomy. Foregrounding Martha’s radical potential, these women accessed divine power and subverted asymmetrical and even oppressive social conditions.

The following chapter, “Image,” traces how women acquired, used, and activated their images of Saint Martha. Inquisition trial records tell us precious little about the makers of these images: No information exists regarding their names, artistic training, or occupations. But by combining hints and scraps of evidence, I reconstruct the contours of informal networks that women utilized to commission and acquire their images—and the legal barriers that they had to overcome to do so. Martha images, I argue, bring to light multiple and collaborative processes of making that unfolded in the interstices between the licit and illicit, the personal and the institutional.

Inés kept her watercolor of Saint Martha folded in an amuletic pouch. According to one witness, Inés referred to the image in its pouch as a “relic.” The term provides a small window into how Inés may have conceptualized her watercolor. Chapter 3, “Relic,” takes its analytical cue from Inés and examines the contested meaning and power of relics in the early Iberian Atlantic and beyond. From Manila to Madrid, women and men referred to a range of flora, fauna, and humble materials as “relics,” which they oftentimes carried in pouches worn on the body. I argue that these “subversive relics” paralleled their sanctioned counterparts in form while also inverting their logic—foregrounding processes of making rather than being.

Chapter 4, “Evidence,” examines how inquisitors transformed devotional images of Martha into prosecutorial documents. Once in the courtroom, the watercolor that had mediated between Inés and the divine became material evidence of her supposed heresy. At a time when the Curia was staunchly defending the proper veneration of sacred images, why would inquisitors confiscate a depiction of an important biblical figure and canonical saint? I approach this question by historicizing conceptions of superstition and hechicería to ask how Martha images cut across theological anxieties related to the relationship between truth and perception.

The study of Martha devotions and their expressive cultures evokes art history’s radical potential. Analyzing these images’ iconography, materiality, and their activation grants us access to the texture of women’s lives in ways that work through and against colonialist archives.

Yale University 
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2024–2026

In 2027 Nathalie Miraval will begin her position as assistant professor of history and theory of art at the Cooper Union.