Wu Li

1632-1718 was a Chinese landscape painter, Christian poet, calligrapher and Jesuit missionary priest from Jiangsu who lived during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912).

In 1688, after seven years of education at St. Paul's College, Macau, Wu was ordained at Nanjing as one of the three first Chinese Jesuit priests, taking the name Simon-Xavier a Cunha.

Wu often went to the Xing Fu Buddhist convent in Suzhou during his middle-age years and was a close friend of monk Mo Yong, but from 1675 on he was inclined toward Roman Catholicism through his contact with Jesuit missionaries Lu Rima (Franciscus de Rougemont), Bai Yingli (Phillippe Couplet), and others.

There he strenuously searched 'the Western Lantern', struggling to learn a new language (Ecclesiastical Latin) and to acquire a new religious dimension, on the lines of the 'Spiritual Exercises', as a son of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

Wu Li could have become a rich and famous court painter, as had his friend Wang Hui, but he chose instead the obscurity of Jiangsu countryside to serve as an itinerant missionary priest, struggling against tremendous difficulties and with poor results.

The Chinese poetry he kept writing as a priest illustrate exceptional qualities of his tireless dedication, his faith, his joys and the moments of frustration.

Wu Li was a man of rare qualities: a fine Chinese intellectual, a remarkable artist, a Jesuit, a missionary and a priest totally devoted to his flock.

He composed many poems reflecting his own preaching career and religious feelings, which are collected in an anthology, San Yi Ji.