Seville is famous throughout the world for its devotion to the Virgin Mary, from Murillo's Immaculate Conceptions to celebrated processional images such as La Macarena and Esperanza de Triana. Yet an old Sevillian tradition looks much further back in time and tells the story of three Marian images whose origins were once believed to reach back to the Visigothic period.
THE ILLUSTRATED LEGEND
Discover the story through our illustrated audiovisual version.
SEVILLE'S THREE OLDEST IMAGES OF THE VIRGIN
Three ancient devotions surrounded by centuries of history and legend.
According to the Sevillian tradition collected by José María de Mena, three Marian images preserve the memory of an extraordinarily ancient Christian presence in the city: Our Lady of the Antigua, Our Lady of the Coral and Our Lady of the Hiniesta. The traditional stories surrounding them place their origins many centuries before the great Baroque devotions for which Seville would later become famous.
The first is the Virgin of the Antigua, still venerated in Seville Cathedral. According to legend, the image already existed before the Muslim conquest and continued to be known by the Christian community of the city. When the great mosque was built, the mural could not simply be carried away, so the Christians supposedly concealed it behind a wall to protect it from destruction.
The tradition says that after Ferdinand III conquered Seville in 1248, the hidden wall was opened and the image appeared once again. Its devotion grew enormously during the following centuries. Princes, kings, sailors and explorers prayed before it, and mariners preparing to cross the Atlantic sought its protection before departing from Seville towards the Americas.
The second image is Our Lady of the Coral, preserved in the Church of San Ildefonso. Mena's account attributes it to a monk named Eustaquio in the Visigothic period and connects its antiquity with early Christian remains associated with the site. The image became one of Seville's historic Marian devotions and takes its name from the small piece of coral worn by the Child.
The third story belongs to the Virgin of the Hiniesta. According to tradition, an ancient image once venerated near Seville's Puerta de Córdoba was taken away when the Muslim invasion began in 711 and hidden far from the city for protection.
Centuries later, the knight Mosén Per de Tous supposedly discovered the image while hunting. Beside it was a message indicating that it came from Seville, from a church near the Puerta de Córdoba. He brought the image back to the city, where it was placed in the parish of San Julián in 1380. The name Hiniesta became linked to the vegetation traditionally said to have concealed the place where the image was found.
The medieval image of the Hiniesta remained one of Seville's great devotions for centuries, but it was lost when the Church of San Julián was destroyed by fire in the 20th century. A new image of the Hiniesta Gloriosa was later created by the Sevillian sculptor Antonio Castillo Lastrucci, preserving the memory and devotion of the original.
The three stories therefore share the same idea: sacred images surviving wars, religious change and the passage of centuries through concealment, rediscovery and devotion. Whether their legendary origins can be historically demonstrated or not, the Antigua, the Coral and the Hiniesta preserve three remarkable chapters in the religious memory of Seville.
BETWEEN HISTORY AND LEGEND
The traditional antiquity of these images and what art history tells us today.
The traditional account gives these three images origins reaching back to the Visigothic period, but modern historical and artistic study draws an important distinction between the age claimed by the legends and the age of the works themselves.
The Virgin of the Antigua preserved in Seville Cathedral is currently dated to the late 14th century. The Cathedral itself presents the story of the image being hidden behind a wall and rediscovered after the conquest of Seville as a legend. What is beyond doubt is the enormous devotion the image acquired and its later relationship with sailors, explorers and the expansion of its cult throughout the Spanish world.
The Virgin of the Coral is likewise not considered a surviving Visigothic painting by modern specialists. It is a Gothic mural generally dated to the second half of the 14th century, around 1375. Its attribution to a Visigothic monk named Eustaquio therefore belongs to the traditional explanation of its origins rather than to its accepted artistic chronology.
The documented history of the Virgin of the Hiniesta in San Julián begins in 1380, while the story of Mosén Per de Tous discovering an ancient Sevillian image is preserved as tradition. The original Hiniesta Gloriosa was a Gothic image of the 14th century and was destroyed in the fire at San Julián on 8 April 1932, not in 1931 as stated in some older accounts.
The present Hiniesta Gloriosa was carved by Antonio Castillo Lastrucci in 1945 as a replacement for the lost medieval image. It should not be confused with the Hiniesta Dolorosa, another work by Castillo Lastrucci created for the penitential brotherhood.
These corrections do not diminish the importance of the tradition. On the contrary, they allow us to distinguish between the legendary origins attributed to the images and the extraordinary medieval devotions that genuinely survived for centuries and became part of Seville's religious identity.
PODCAST VERSION
Prefer to listen? Discover the story in its original podcast version.
SOURCE AND ADAPTATION
Adapted for Sevilla Ciudad Mágica from the Sevillian tradition collected by José María de Mena in Tradiciones y Leyendas Sevillanas.
Seville is not only discovered through its monuments and streets.
Its legends are also part of its history and cultural memory.
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