Month: June 2026
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Anonymous Filipino, Girl with Bird and Flowers, c. 1801-1850
The painting Niña con pájaro y flores (Girl with Bird and Flowers) has been identified as Filipino based on the species of the bird shown in the background. The museum record identifies the bird as a pied fantail, Rhipidura javanica, a species associated with the Philippines and Southeast Asia. It appears on a branch at…
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The Ship of Religion in Ivory, by a 17th Century Anonymous Filipino artist
This seventeenth-century ivory plaque in the National Museum of Decorative Arts in Madrid is one of the stranger religious images attributed to the Philippines. The work shows the Nave Typus Religionis, or Ship of Religion, a Counter-Reformation allegory in which the Catholic Church is imagined as a vessel crossing the sea of life while demons,…
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A 1698 Dutch etching of Mindanao by Caspar Luyken
Caspar Luyken’s Grote optocht ter gelegenheid van de aankomst van kapitein Charles Swan op Mindanao (Grand Procession on the Occasion of the Arrival of Captain Charles Swan on Mindanao) is a Dutch etching dated 1698. Made as a book illustration for volume I of William Dampier’s Nieuwe reystogt rondom de werreld, published in The Hague…
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Damian Domingo, Girl with a puppy, 1833
I would not describe Damián Domingo’s Niña con perrito [Girl with a puppy, a miniature poodle] as a discovery in the strict sense. The ivory miniature was already known by at least 2012, when it appeared in Madrid’s Museo del Romanticismo records on children’s portrait miniatures. To my knowledge, however, it has received little or…
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Rafael, A Story in Portraits
I returned to Vicente Rafael’s essay on photography after learning of his passing on February 21, 2026. Professor Rafael, as I continued to call him even after knowing him for years, was seventy. Our conversations became more regular after I began graduate studies at Cornell, where he had also studied in the early 1980s. I…
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What do we mean when we say “Happy Father’s Day”?
Maybe we are not only greeting a father, but acknowledging a presence that shaped us before we could fully recognize it. For Jacques Lacan, the father is not only the biological parent but also a place in language. The father is one of the first figures through whom we learn that love is also structure.…
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With Rizal, a Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing
The Newberry Library essay “Rizal before ‘Rizal’: Lessons from His Notebook” written by Luis Castellvi Laukamp is a useful example of how access to a primary source does not, by itself, guarantee historical understanding. The article discusses an important manuscript: Rizal’s Clínica médica, a notebook of medical notes, sketches, language exercises, book lists, and draft…
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From Manila to Bologna
From Manila to Bologna The recent death of Carlo Ginzburg, one of my favorite historians, made me think again about Bologna. Ginzburg, the great scholar of microhistory, taught us to look closely at small things, traces, clues, and fragments. That way of thinking brought me back to an unexpected connection between Manila and Bologna. The…
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Princess Philippine
For a famously chaotic republic, Filipinos seem to have a particular fondness for naming their daughters after queens and princesses. I once saw a post, whether real or satire, I can’t recall, about a class roster in which more than half the girls were named “Princess.” So if you’re looking for a royal name for…
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Jan van der Straet’s (Stradanus) Ferdinand Magellan on His Ship (1589)
Jan van der Straet’s (Stradanus) Ferdinand Magellan on His Ship (1589) belongs to the Americae Retectio series, a group of engravings commemorating the navigators associated with overseas expansion. Magellan occupies the center of the composition seated aboard a ship equipped with cannon, navigational instruments, and the Spanish coat of arms. He holds a pair of…
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Jan van der Straet’s (Stradanus) Conquest of the Philippine Islands (ca. 1590s)
Jan van der Straet’s (Stradanus) Conquest of the Philippine Islands (ca. 1590s) is among the earliest European images of the archipelago. The surviving work is a preparatory drawing (modello) for a monochrome (grisaille) painting executed by his son Scipione Stradano for the funeral ceremonies of Philip II of Spain at the Basilica of San Lorenzo…