The origin of Holy Week in Seville is really uncertain. Generally, the year is taken as reference 1521, thanks to one of the most relevant families in the city, Fernandez de Ribera, when a Via Crucis is established at the temple, still standing today, in the so-called "Cruz del Campo".
We could affirm that the concept of Holy Week arises from the fusion of several currents present prior to the aforementioned date.. In the middle of the 14th century, one of the first brotherhoods of penance emerges that are still active today, the Brotherhood of the Primitive Nazarenes of Seville. Equally, other brotherhoods of ethnic minorities arise, very present in the 15th century, like the blacks, also present today. In addition, Others arise linked to union organizations such as that of the road workers (Road Safety). The increasing existence of each of these types of brotherhoods was, little by little, bringing together a set of processions that will give rise to what we know today as Holy Week.
The geographical center of the process is the Cathedral of Santa María de la Sede (Cathedral of Sevilla). since the year 1604, thanks to an instruction from Archbishop Niño de Guevara, All brotherhoods are obliged to perform a penance station up to the main altar of the cathedral, except for those in the peripheral Triana neighborhood, which would have to make this station to the main church of the suburb., Santa Ana. Equally, In this period one of the most relevant events in the religious history of the city takes place.. In 1613, the myth of the Immaculate Conception of Mary is established for the first time in Christianity. This entails a radical change both in the penance stations and in their aesthetic representation., with repercussions that last to this day.
Evidently, along the history, the city has never been impervious to the changes that occurred in its environment. Thus, the breakdown of religious unity at the beginning of the 16th century in Western Europe, as well as the impulse given by the Catholic Church to reinforce its dominance, in a current known as Counter-Reformation, will have a key impact on the aesthetics of the images, until then secondary, that process through the city.
In this sense, The period of greatest imagery production corresponds to the 16th-17th centuries.. It is at this time, known as Baroque, when some of the most representative images of Holy Week in Seville. In a short period of time, figures of the stature of Martínez Montañés will gather in the city (Christ of Passion), his disciple Juan de Mesa (Great power) or the workshop around the Roldán family, to which is attributed, in particular to his daughter the making of the Macarena. This Sevillian imagery style is characterized by a taste for beauty., harmony and closeness in the most classic way.
Posteriorly, In the first third of the 20th century, another aesthetic revolution took place with the work of the image maker Antonio Castillo-Lastrucci, who carried out a work with a large number of productions and thanks to which the current model of the mystery steps present today was established..