Saints Justa and Rufina

Stepping into the Sacristy of the Chalices in the Seville Cathedral, you might get aesthetic fatigue from the walls of gleaming religious icons—until you are stopped dead in your tracks by this massive, nearly three-meter-tall oil painting: Saints Justa and Rufina. This is no ordinary, pious hymn; it is a massive, controversial mystery box left inside this holy cathedral by Spain’s greatest “dark genius,” Francisco de Goya.

Don’t be fooled by the decent clothing and demure expressions of these two young women. If you turn on your “microscope vision,” the details at the bottom of the canvas will definitely send shivers down your spine. First, look at their feet: there is a smashed, headless statue. Even more outrageously, in the bottom right corner lies a massive, full-grown lion! This supposedly ferocious beast is currently as tame as an orange house cat, sticking its tongue out to lick the bare toes of one of the girls. Why is her foot bare? Because in ancient Roman times, this was an incredibly cruel punishment: executioners forced them to run barefoot over paths covered in broken glass and sharp, jagged rocks.

If you know absolutely nothing about Christian history, let’s break down this “ancient public disturbance” scene in the simplest terms. In the 3rd century, Seville was still under the rule of the Roman Empire. Justa and Rufina were two sisters who made a living selling pottery (which is why they are holding clay pots in the painting). One day, a crowd of pagans was parading a goddess statue down the street and stopped by their stall to buy pots for offerings. These two hardcore Christian sisters not only flatly refused but, during the ensuing scuffle, completely smashed the pagan idol to pieces (hence the rubble on the ground in the painting). The Roman prefect was furious and subjected them to various tortures, eventually throwing Rufina into the amphitheater to be eaten by lions. But a miracle happened: the starving lion didn’t eat her; instead, it acted like a pet and licked her wounded feet.

Ultimately, these two unyielding pottery-selling girls were tortured to death, but because of this, they became the “ultimate patron saints” of the city of Seville. Look at the background of the painting: faintly visible in the sky is the famous Giralda bell tower. There has long been a myth in Seville: during the massive 1504 earthquake that nearly destroyed the entire city, Justa and Rufina miraculously appeared in mid-air, hugging the bell tower from both sides to keep the cathedral from collapsing. So, enshrining their portrait in the cathedral is essentially the people of Seville paying their “protection money.”

But what truly makes this painting highly dramatic in art history is the painter himself, Goya. In 1817, when the conservative clerics of the Seville Cathedral paid a fortune for Goya to paint this work, Goya had just survived the brutal baptism of the Napoleonic Wars and had long since gone completely deaf from an illness. This old man, who had seen through the darkness of human nature, had no interest in painting hollow, perfect saints floating on clouds. He did something that almost made the church authorities cough up blood: supposedly, he went straight to the streets of Seville and hired two actual prostitutes to serve as his models!

Although the high-ranking church officials ground their teeth over rumors of him “painting earthly women of the night as holy virgins,” faced with Goya’s oppressive brushstrokes and soul-stirring dark tones, they ultimately paid up and hung the painting in a highly sacred spot. This painting thus became a brilliant piece of irony: the most secular, lower-class bodies, cloaked in the most sacred religious garb, openly receiving centuries of worship.

Next time you stand in the Seville Cathedral looking up at these two girls, will you admire the courage that made them give up their lives for their faith, or will you inevitably catch yourself wondering what those two street girls, invited into Goya’s studio, actually thought when they realized they were about to become the eternal patron saints of a grand cathedral?