To many, Juan Luna is Spoliarium and Spoliarium is Juan Luna.
Yet like most things in life, there is so much more to it than meets the eye.
On 12 June, our 125th Independence Day, Ayala Museum unveiled to the public for free a long-lost artwork by the famous Filipino painter, who had been somehow superseded by modern adaptations of his brother Antonio’s life.
Heneral Luna, the movie, brought the current generation up to speed with a moment in our history. Yet it wasn’t only the hotheaded general who had a short but colorful life.
Juan Luna was born in Badoc, Ilocos Norte. He died at age 42 in Hong Kong, but in between, his talent and artistry ensured that his name would live forever.
His most famous work, the Spoliarium, was entered at Madrid’s Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in May 1884. It was his biggest work on canvas, finished in eight months sometime after the Ayuntamiento de Manila had given him an art scholarship following a silver medal won for his painting, La Muerte de Cleopatra (The Death of Cleopatra) in 1881.
For the art grant, Ayuntamiento required him to create a piece that “captured the essence of Philippine history,” according to some sources. The oil on canvas that depicts dead and bloodied gladiators now hangs in the main gallery of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Manila.
The fact that this work inspired Jose Rizal to write his Noli Me Tangere — both men from the same generation of radical and highly educated Filipinos using their talents to illustrate the plight of our people at the time while urging the youth to feel and to think — is a subject of discourse in itself.
That this still means something today, when even the current President has talked about how Filipinos have yet to be truly free, is another.
In his 125th Independence Day speech at the Quirino Grandstand, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. talked about the “manifold un-freedoms prevailing in society that stand in the way of human development.”
In his speech, he identified these as “the corrosive political and social conditions that make the nation not as free as we would like to profess and to believe, such as poverty, inadequate economic opportunities, disabling rather than enabling living conditions.”
On the same day, Juan Luna’s missing work, the Hymen, oh Hyménée!, was unveiled to the public, with free entrance for a day. (The work is on view at Ayala Museum’s “Splendor: Juan Luna, Painter as Hero” exhibit until December this year.)
Amazingly, the painting was found after nearly a decade-long search by art collector and León Gallery founder Jaime Ponce de Leon.
The painting, considered “the holy grail of Philippine art,” was last seen in Paris 132 years ago where it won bronze at the Paris World Fair.
The painting shows a Roman wedding feast (Hymen is the god of marriage in Greek mythology) and is said to have been painted while Luna was on his honeymoon with his wife, Paz Pardo de Tavera.
Research revealed that his marriage to the “daughter of the Grand Inquisitor of Spain” was alleged to be rocky, marked with disapproval and later jealousy that led to a crime of passion.
Based on a report in a network’s online news site, Ponce de Leon’s search for the Juan Luna painting could be likened to an adventure movie where our protagonist is on the hunt for a treasure lost for generations.
He talked about how he went all over Europe trying to trace its whereabouts until he got that precious call one day in 2014 — “and was told to be at the doorstep of a certain aristocratic, lordly home in a European city by 10 [a.m.] sharp,” the report quotes Ponce de Leon.
Finding it, he said, “reminds us that the first-ever world-famous Filipino was a painter!”
Then again, of course, there is more to it than that. Having a long-lost work of art by Juan Luna returned to our country is like the dead master reminding us to take pride in our heritage, and to keep the Filipino spirit alive.