His figures carved in wood, with a rably contemporary imprint – the dark timeless clothes, articulated arms – appear majestic in the IV room of the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville. They are the three most famous characters on the calls 26 martyrs of Nagasaki And they have gone down with their Christianized names: San Pablo Miki, San Diego Kisai and San Juan Soan de Goto, who died crucified in February 1597 in one of the most dantesque collective martyrdom of a then newborn order called Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), to which these three local young people had been assigned.
The Jesuits was a very young religious order that had no advocations yet. It was important, therefore, in the process of evangelization of overseas territories, finding their own saints and, even more, images to venerate. Seville was the great religious art factory of the time, painting workshops, sculpture and imagery workers, the great artists of the brush and gouges arriving from all parts of Europe, also born in the city – in 1599 it would come to the world Velázquez and, 18 years later, Murillo -, they made Seville of art and wealth in full expansion of the counterrefor They were making appearance in all corners of the city. And that had to be decorated.
It is in this environment that the Jesuits get Rome to beatify the three martyrs of Nagasaki in 1627, which finally allowed their public cult. This is: having the image of a saint to pray. Thus, the Professor House of the Society of Jesus in Seville commits the representation of San Pablo Miki, San Diego Kisai and San Juan Soan de Goto to two of the most important workshops in the city: Juan de Mesa in the case of Miki and Goto (Mesa is the author of the image of the celebrated Jesus of the Great Power) and Martínez Montañés in the case of Kisai. Both artists already had a long career of orders promoted by the Society of Jesus for Seville and America. Now, the best Sevillian and Spanish baroque at the service of evangelization in Asia.
“These martyrs are the first saints of the company that are incorporated into the iconographic programs of the Churches of the Society of Jesus,” explains the general director of Museums of the Junta de Andalucía, which together with the restoration and permanent exhibition of these impressive sculptures in the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville, has led to an encounter this week with various specialists from the East and West who explain the continuous relations between Seville Gold
“Taking religious images to Japan it was easier than the population and feudal lords understood evangelizing messages. San Francisco Javier Fulls ships with virgins, saints and all kinds of paintings. There they learn Japanese and translate simple texts.” “There is also an adaptation of Christianity to Japanese customs, as observed in the black habit of the three martyrs,” explains the professor and vice -dean in Eastern Asia studies at the University of Seville, Jesús San Bernardino.
Back, the Japanese decoration in the court of Felipe II began to be a sign of distinction, but despite the history shared between Seville and Nagasaki, the presence of Japanese in the Peninsula had not occurred and the great sculptors and imagers represented these saints with Western features. “In the first representations the Japanese are not racialized, it does not happen until much later,” says San Bernardino.
The devotion to these Japanese blessed became very common in Seville in the seventeenth century, and there are other representations both in sculpture and in painting in other locations in the province, such as Morón de la Frontera, or in nearby cities, such as Cádiz. “Art, often supported by the printing press, thus becomes an instrument to spread the martyrdom by faith as an example for the faithful,” says Aurora Villalobos.
After 50 years without being shown, the three pieces – “very unique, an exceptional testimony,” emphasizes the director of the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville, Valme Muñoz – have joined the permanent collection of the Pinacoteca, after a restoration process carried out in the museum itself. One of the first visitors from Japan to contemplate them has been the professor at the Catholic University of Nagasaki Osami Takizawa, a true expert in this historical context of the Franciscan and Jesuit missions in Asia during the 16th century. “Evangelization began with San Francisco Javier in 1549 in the western region of the country. There were feudal gentlemen that were baptized, the first church in Kyoto was founded, there were 250 throughout Japan, and up to 153,000 people became those first years,” Takizawa contextualizes. On the profile of the three martyrs so venerated in Seville in the subsequent centuries, the professor highlights “the appreciated sermons” for which Pablo Miki was known; “The art of writing letters” by Diego Kisai and Juan de Goto, “catechist in Osaka” who had already been born from a Christian family.
The three were arrested and imprisoned in Osaka. The next day, the long march of one month towards Nagasaki began for the prisoners, where they were killed along with six Franciscans and 15 tertiary.