Giovanni Niccolo was born in Naples in 1560. At the age of eighteen he joined the Society of Jesus before travelling to Lisbon in 1579, and from there sailing to India. Thus began a journey that would become the work of his life. His evangelizing presence as a scholar and artist in the East would leave a strong impression and a school of art that is today considered one of the most important in Japan. After a brief stay in Goa, he moved on to Macao, where in 1582 he met Father Alessandro Valignano, who would travel to Rome with four young legates of the three Christian Daimyos on the island of Kyushu.

On 25 June 1583, he entered the port of Nagasaki aboard the ship named Aires Goncalves de Miranda. Physically debilitated, his early years would be consumed by theological studies and the difficult task of learning Japanese. His artistic production during this time is therefore scarce. However, in those early years he did manage to introduce copper engraving, oil or glass painting and even the production of complicated clock towers and organs made from bamboo cane into Japan.

In the article titled Giovani Cola, the man who turned stones to flowers published by the magazine of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Seville, Diego Pacheco divides his life between Nagasaki, the seminary at Arima and the Church of Kyoto, the latter of which is of great importance because it is there where he comes into contact with the painters of Japan’s famous "Kano” school. Exiled in 1587 by order of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, he returns to the island of Kyushu, taking up residence in the Arima seminary and opening his painting school in 1590. Thanks to Father Valignano, who had introduced the printing of mobile characters in Japan, they begin to print catechism and Christian themed books with engravings by Giovanni Niccolo on the introductory pages.

In 1597, again due to the persecution of Christians, the school had to be moved to different locations such as Hachirao, Kazusa, Arie, Arima, Shiki and Nagasaki, where its Christian activities would not be so zealously persecuted. This is the year of the Great Martyrdom of the 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki and the year in which Giovanni Niccolo directed the execution of the painting and engraving of Our Lady of Antiquity, known in Japan as The Virgin of Seville (Fig. 1), which reproduced an engraving of this  image brought to Japan by the missionaries and later moved to Manila before ultimately being returned to Japan.

Giovanni’s most prolific period would take place between 1601 and 1614 at his studio in Nagasaki, in collaboration with various painters from the Kano school. It was here in 1602 that Niccolo was ordained a priest. In 1614, he travelled to Macau with his disciples to continue his work at the University College of St Paul, decorating the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption. He died in 1626 and was buried in that church, which was later destroyed by fire in 1835.

In his article, A Man of the Italian Renaissance, the priest and scholar of Japanese art, Fernando G. Gutierrez, and honorary member of the Association of Japanese Studies of the Academy of Fine Arts in Seville, considers that although no clearly documented works by Giovanni Niccolo have been preserved, there are certain works that can be attributed to him by circumstantial deduction. On one of the Namban-byobu screens preserved at the Imperial Collection of Tokyo, one can clearly see, on the altar of a church, a painting with the image of the Saviour of the World, which was known to be one of Giovanni Cola's favourite and most oft-repeated themes. So much so that in a letter written from Goa in 1581 and addressed to Fr. Claudio Aquaviva (1581-1615) of the Society of Jesus, a small face of the Saviour like the ones seen in his paintings appears next to his weapon. This suggests that the print on the first page of the book, Doctrine of the College of the Society of Jesus, published by the College of Amakusa in 1592, was made by Cola himself.

It is known that in 1587 Giovanni Niccolo sent to China, at the request of Fr. Mateo Ricci (1552-1610), a painting representing the Saviour of the World, along with others depicting St. Lawrence and St. Stephen. There is also a Japanese painting dated 1597 representing a Saviour of the World from an engraving by Johan Wierix based on a drawing by Maerten de Vos. On the back of this painting we find the Latin inscription, Sacam Jacobus, which according to some specialists on Christian art in Japan translates to Jacobo Niwa, who was a disciple of Niccolo and widely recognized by his contemporaries.

Thanks to the existence of a painting representing Christ Crucified with Saint Francis Xavier and Saint Paul Miki by the artist Juan de Roelas and also given the importance of the College of the Incarnation of the Society of Jesus in Marchena (Seville) to the Jesuit missions, Fernando G. Gutierrez was able to establish a strong connection between this college, which was particularly linked to the mission of Japan operated by the Jesuits on those islands starting with the arrival of Saint Francis Xavier in 1549.