In the Summer of 1996, following a pious comment from a priest on a visit to Shanghai, a Macao resident considered making a painting of the Virgin Mary depicting her as Empress of China.
On a trip to Hong Kong, he commissioned the well-known artist Chu Kar Kui to draw a sketch depicting the Virgin Mary and the Child on her lap dressed up with imperial robes.
Weeks later in Beijing he showed the sketch to the parish priest of the North Cathedral, and they discussed the possibility of commissioning an oil painting.
The priest agreed to find a place for the painting if the artist were able to accomplish it. Months later the canvas was installed in a side chapel in Beitang.
In 1997, devotion to the image began to spread throughout Asia. Joe Cremades, in Manila, gave a prayer card to Spanish university professor Antonio Lucas. The prayer card had printed on its back the Chinese version of the Memorare prayer composed by St. Bernard.
When the professor traveled to China in 2007, he found surprisingly that the original painting of the Empress was hanging in a side chapel of the North Cathedral.
This painting accompanied him almost every day during his sabbatical year at Beida (University of Beijing).
From the very beginning, he often distributed pictures of the icon among his friends. In this way, devotion to the image spread to the West and in particular to Spain and Latin America.
That same year he conceived the idea of creating bas-reliefs inspired by the icon.
In 2007, professor Lucas who had discovered the icon of Our Lady the Empress of China in Beitang, came up with the idea of making tablets based on this oil painting.
For inspiration, he spent several days wandering around the Liulichang district in Beijing to sumerge himself in the Chinese culture and in search of craftsmen. Half a dozen attempts at wood reliefs followed, but the face of the Virgin did not turn out as he expected.
So, on his return to Spain in 2008, he continued the search for a sculptor capable of carving the image of the Mother of China. This task took him four long and fruitless years.
The turning point arrived in 2012. During his visit to his hometown Cieza, the 94-year-old mother of the professor aranged to put him in contact with a young sculptor with the idea of improving the Liulichang reliefs.
The artist took one of the tablets and in a matter of minutes he managed to transform the Virgin’s features into a more realistic face. The professor, seeing his mastery, asked him if he would be able to make a real human size carving. The sculptor, excited by the challenge, agreed to make a sketch of the bust of the Virgin, and to keep it himself if the result was not convincing.
After reaching the agreement, a complex process began through a first phase in clay, another in plaster and with the final one in wood, which would be completed with painting and varnishing.
But the key to everything was still the face of the Virgin, since the Child, in the sculptor’s opinion, would be easy.
The artist had to bring into play all the skills of centuries-old tradition of religious sculpture, widespread throughout Spain, especially in Murcia and Andalusia with its famous Holy Week processions.
The challenge was to bring out the face of the Virgin in clay. The first objective was to achieve the flatter character of the Chinese beauty as opposed to the more pointed European faces that the sculptor had used to perform.
And the second was to represent a young woman in her early twenties with a slimmer and more slender neck.
In a few months, the model was transferred to polychrome plaster. After a year of work, the sculpture was carefully moved to the University City of Madrid and exhibited in the personal library of the professor’s office. Quite a few artists passed by during a period of one month, with generally complimentary comments and suggestions for improvements.
The selection of wood would undoubtedly be “cedro real”, with a long tradition in the history of Spanish imagery. The process would culminate with painting and varnishing.
The figure of the Child came out, almost by enchantment, with an extraordinary beauty and sympathy. The images were precious and, upon receiving the appropriate vestments from China, the task was completed.
On October 25, 2014, the image received the blessing in the Basilica of the Assumption of Cieza and was placed on the main altar for a few days, receiving many visits and compliments.
The following text corresponds to the presentation of the sculpture, carved by Antonio Yuste, of Our Lady of China in the Church of the Assumption in Cieza before being taken to the Cathedral of Beitang in Beijing.
The image of Our Lady Empress of China, is a faithful transposition of the icon of small format and similar invocation found in the cathedral of Beijing, painted by the master Chu Kar Kui.
The sculpture, of natural size, has been conceived to comfort the soul of the Chinese faithful using the elements that are proper and inherent to their culture. Becoming one with the believer, naturally, without foreign elements that, because they could be misunderstood -by the western ones provoking their disconnection towards what it represents.
The author has shown absolute skill and mastery in knowing how to free himself from the conventions of traditional imagery, to model a Marian image of purely Chinese physiognomy, with features and workmanship even more refined than the original on which it is based. Restrained in the use of pictorial resources, so as not to betray the Chinese canon of beauty. Thus, it is worth noting in the image a soft and snowy polychrome, very delicate in its conception, typical of the aforementioned canon that does not conceive of tanned skin, much less in what concerns the noble lineage – hence the absence of patinas or other similar artifices. In a majestic position, as befits an Empress, the image makes no concession to any sentimentality, unbecoming of her class, which would make her composition somewhat rigid and cold a priori. A hieratism that does not diminish its power; but rather, inspired by the Gothic art style, is used by the author to give the image an aura capable of converting the surrounding into a sacred space; and for those who contemplate it, a revelation.
It is the image of Jesus that humanizes the mother, preventing her from being a mere throne for her exaltation.
The tenderness of the Child is the compositional element destined to touch the soul of the devotee, to connect with his inner life and put him on the road to conversion, through the prayer aroused in the contemplative process of the image.
Perhaps for this reason, the author could not resist, with the image of the Child, to relax the strict criteria to which he had to submit his technical qualities; thus, he used a soft modeling in the hair of the Child, based on very fine and light locks- that mark out the whole head, very much in the Mediterranean taste: a small anachronistic license that will speak of the origin of its author in a land far away from the same. The hair, moreover, is completely black, like the Mother’s, with no reflections or pictorial re-workings that would have perhaps given it greater visual richness, but which would have betrayed the trust placed in it to give a Marian heart to the Chinese women…
At Christmas 2014 a Roman bishop printed this image and sent it out as a Christmas greeting card to all the bishops of Asia with the dedication “Sancta Maria Regina Asiae, filios tuos adiuva!”, which in English goes like this:
Holy Mary Queen of Asia, help your children.
In 2015 the carving was a finalist in the National Award “La Hornacina” as the best religious sculpture of the year in Spain.
That same year it was published in Miriam, a magazine specialized in Marian culture.
The image remained two years in a large wooden box due to doubts about the internation and safety to China. In 2016, the professor was invited to attend an International Congress on the family, organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It was then that he took the opportunity to dispatch the image to China.
On May 3, the image arrived Beijing, and after two weeks of intense daily negotiations with the customs, the authorization for entry was finally obtained. The arrival in Beitang was truly joyful. A small group of faithful members of the parish received it with joy and expectation and took charge of assembling it, dressing it and installing it temporarily in the sacristy.
Once the months of the pandemic restrictions caused by Covid were over, a new chapel with an imperial throne was built and the image was blessed by the bishop.
© 2025 MADRE DE CHINA
Asociación de Amigos de Madre de China (c/Rector Royo Villanova 10, 28040 Madrid)
