Category: Artists
-
1792, The Mermaid of Manila Bay
Earlier this morning, I saw Fernando Brambila’s graphite drawing of a dugong at a special exhibition at the Galería de las Colecciones Reales, beside the Palacio Real in Madrid. I thought it was a bizarre coincidence that exactly 234 years earlier, on 24 August 1792, the animal depicted in the drawing was captured in Manila…
-
Anonymous was a Filipino: Who Drew Mallat’s Philippine Plates? Juan Serapio Transfiguración Nepomuceno and His Son
I began this inquiry by asking who made the original illustrations for Jean-Baptiste Mallat’s Les Philippines (1846). I initially suspected José Honorato Lozano, but the documentary evidence points more directly to another Manila artist: Juan Serapio Transfiguración Nepomuceno. The atlas’s celebrated hand-colored plates are repeatedly described simply as “French illustrations” or credited exclusively to Adolphe…
-
Rembrandt’s only still life print is of a Philippine shell (1650)
Notice: This post is accompanied by a Facebook Reel in the hyperlink below. Full English translation below for international followers To celebrate West Philippine Sea Victory Day, I want to share an artwork that will give us even more motivation to protect our territorial waters. The title of this work is The Shell, and it…
-
Juan Luna at Casa-Museu José Benlliure
Valencia, Spain— Five little-known works by Juan Luna remain in the Casa-Museu José Benlliure, far from the Philippine collections that usually define his career. Four are catalogued under his name, while a fifth watercolor carries a tentative attribution: Sacerdotisa (1883), Retrato de María Benlliure Ortiz niña con abrigo azul (1884), Poblado filipino (c. 1880), Paisaje…
-
Goya’s Drawing of an Elephant from Manila
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) was a Spanish Romantic painter and printmaker. He is regarded as one of the most important Spanish artists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected the political and social upheavals of his time and had a major influence on later European…
-
Erased Fernando Zobel mural at Parish of the Holy Sacrifice (1953-1955)
I visited the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice at the University of the Philippines yesterday and tried to find out the exact location of Fernando Zóbel’s now erased mural. Completed in 1955, the circular church brought together some of the most important figures in Philippine modernism: architecture by Leandro Locsin, sculpture by Napoleon Abueva, floor…
-
Mikhail Tikhonovich Tikhanov: a Russian artist in Manila (1819)
During the Manila stop of Captain V.M. Golovnin’s 1817–1819 circumnavigation aboard the sloop Kamchatka, the expedition artist Mikhail T. Tikhanov produced a series of drawings from direct observation, of which only three Manila scenes are known to survive. An Indian in Manila Took Tikhanov’s Hat and Ran Away, Malays Arey and Thomas from the Island…
-
Setting the record straight: Joaquín Pardo de Tavera y Gómez (9 November 1829, San Roque, Cavite – 19 March 1885, Paris)
Online sources are unreliable for the visual identification and basic biography of Joaquín Pardo de Tavera y Gómez. Google results and highly visited websites often confuse him with other members of the Pardo de Tavera family. I asked fellow historians but none could offer a definite visual identification of the important historical figure. So I…
-
Doubting Thomas, an Easter Egg
The Feast of the Resurrection has just passed and now its time to return to work and to Manila traffic. I find myself going back to old emails. In them, I notice Vince Rafael’s last email and the profile picture he once used: a detail from The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio. It feels,…
-
From the Archive: EL 82
Originally published in Excelsior, Ano XXIX (Numero 928), Febrero 29, 1932 Five decades ago, on the first day of March of that year so sorrowfully remembered in the history of the capital—because during its course it was first visited by the terrible traveler from the Ganges, which spread death and the most dreadful devastation among…
-
Monthly art history article for Philippines Graphic
I’ve started writing a semi-regular art history feature for Philippines Graphic. Founded in 1927 by Ramon Roces, the magazine remains one of the country’s oldest periodicals still in print. My article this month traces the lesser-known history of Spoliarium by Juan Luna in Rome and Barcelona, where it was first exhibited alongside Catalan artists. Get…
-
Félix Pardo de Tavera y Gorricho (Manila, 1859 – Paris, 1932)
Erratum: This post previously included a photograph I identified as Trinidad Hermenegildo Pardo de Tavera (T.H.) and Felix Pardo de Tavera in their youth, sourced from Alfred W. McCoy’s Anarchy of Families (Manila: ADMU Press, 1994). The image in fact depicts a younger generation of Pardo de Taveras from the early 20th century. I am…
-
Women Pioneers of Philippine Art
In celebration of International Women’s Day, allow me to introduce three pioneering and remarkable women in Philippine Art. By the late 19th century, women began carving their place in formal art education led by the trailblazing Pelagia Mendoza y Gotianquin (1867-1939). Born in Pateros, Mendoza grew up demonstrating exceptional talent in artistic pursuits such as…
-
A Filipino painter you should know: Eduardo Arandia Salgado
The following article expands the original posted here: https://libguides.nybg.org/c.php?g=1465030 Eduardo Arandia Salgado (1910–1987) was a Filipino painter and botanical illustrator born in Manila. He studied painting at the University of the Philippines, completing advanced courses between 1931 and 1932 under the direction of Fabian de la Rosa and Fernando Amorsolo. Trained in a classical style,…
-
Antonio Garcia Llamas (1912–1999)
Antonio Garcia y Llamas (1912–1999) was a Filipino painter, muralist, and teacher who worked between Manila, Jakarta, and Madrid. Little is written about Garcia but his work aligns with the Philippine academic tradition in twentieth-century Philippine painting. He was born in Manila on 16 May 1912 and received his early education at the Colegio de…
-
Manila Beans in a Medici Recipe Book
When I visited Florence over the summer, I was surprised by how many Filipinos I met. Some were priests. Others ran restaurants or worked as artists. Hearing Tagalog in Tuscan streets made me think about older connections between Manila and Europe. I began wondering how Manila was imagined by the rest of the world during…
-
The Chapel in the Six Circuits of Hell
In his Kapilya installation for Art Fair Philippines, Max Balatbat assembles a makeshift chapel of salvaged wood and rusted rebar. This is supposed to represent the look of faith forged from marginal lives that the art writer Carla Gamalinda has compared to the one studied by Rey Ileto’s Pasyon at Revolution. A pendulum whip swings…
-
Modernist Morophilia
Thank you to my colleagues at the Ateneo, especially Charlie Samuya Veric, for making this possible. This lecture on January 19 2026 will be inside Ateneo Katipunan Campus at the NGF Conference Room, located on the ground floor of Horacio De La Costa Hall. During my dissertation research, I came to see how many of…
-
The afterlives of Rizal’s A orillas del Pasig
A orillas del Pasig circulated in late nineteenth-century Manila as music sung in drawing rooms and printed as sheet music. Its most familiar version, A orillas del Pasig: Danza Filipina para Canto y Piano, features lyrics credited to José Rizal and music composed by his Ateneo Municipal classmate Blas Echegoyen. Hardly anyone remembers that the…
-
Coulisse ala Philippine
I was reminded of a term I’ve seen before but never fully grasped during an art history lecture by Andrew Moisey on staffage in photography: the coulisse (pronounced koo-LEES). Developed by Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin in 17th-century Rome, it refers to the dark “wing” of trees or architecture placed on one side of a…
-
Ang Mutya ng Epiro: Isang Maagímat na Pagbása sa Florante at Laura ni Balagtas at Marca Demonio ni Amorsolo
Disyembre 13, 2025, Sabado 3-4 PM Unibersidad ng Pilipinas-Diliman Tatalakayin ng presentasyong ito ang dalawang anyo ng alegorikong substitusyon. Una, ang pagpapalit ng Pilipinas bilang Epiro sa Florante at Laura ni Balagtas. Dito inilalarawan ang isang kalis bilang sandata ng kabutihan at sagisag ng banal na katarungan. Ikalawa, ang Kris Joloano na muling lumitaw sa imahen ni San Miguel Arkanghel sa Noli…
-
La Bulaqueña: What We Know About The Louvre Abu Dhabi’s Latest Attraction
The following notes draw from the wealth of information shared by scholars, collectors, archival researchers, and art history networks following the loan of La Bulaqueña (1895) to the Louvre Abu Dhabi (June 2025). It brings together insights from literature, oral histories, institutional records, and recent findings that have come to light in the wake of…
-
Pearls in Jean Fouquet’s Melun Madonna
Painted ca. 1452–58 as the right wing of the Melun Diptych, Madonna and Child Surrounded by Seraphim and Cherubim by Jean Fouquet constitutes a singular contribution to the visual culture of the French court. Executed in oil on panel, the painting presents a Marian figure suspended between celestial abstraction and courtly specificity. Seated on a…
-
Goya’s Fight with Cudgels
Two men, isolated in a barren landscape, beat each other with heavy sticks. There’s no clear reason, no visible audience, and—crucially—no way out. Their legs vanish below the frame, long assumed to be submerged in mud. Later photographs taken before the painting’s transfer to canvas suggest they may have been standing in tall grass. Either…
-
Felix Hidalgo, Un Rio
The enigmatic painter Felix Resureccion Hidalgo captures a river veiled in the quiet of early evening. The viewer’s gaze glides over the water’s surface, mirroring the way our eyes perceive the fading light by fluidly dissolving into darkness. The glow trembles in the foreground, absorbed by the landscape rather than resisted, as if the deepening…
-
Juan Adán Morlán (1741–1816)
Juan Adán Morlán (1741–1816) is one of the defining sculptors of Spanish Neoclassicism, a figure whose artistic achievements were often intertwined with personal controversies and professional disputes. Born in Tarazona, Aragón, and baptized on March 1, 1741, Adán’s early life was rooted in a family of carpenters. His father’s craft provided the young Adán with…
-
Marca Demonio de las Comparaciones: Die anachronistische Substitution des Kris Joloano in Rizal und Amorsolo
Diese Studie untersucht die anachronistische Präsenz des Kris Joloano in José Rizals Noli Me Tangere (1887) und Fernando Amorsolos Marca Demonio, dem Etikett für den Ginebra San Miguel-Likör, das 1917 geschaffen wurde. Aufbauend auf Nagels und Woods Untersuchung von Anachronismen während der Renaissance positioniert die Analyse die neugierige Einfügung eines Kris Joloano als zeitliche Brücke,…
-
Edades and the fabricated history of his Armory Show conversion to Modern Art
Nicola Kanmany John’s dissertation has critically examined the narrative surrounding the Filipino artist Victorio Edades’s Armory Show conversion to Modern Art. Edades is often regarded as the “father of Philippine modernism” and Kanmany John’s findings challenges the claim that a Seattle exhibition inspired by the 1913 Armory Show of New York fundamentally shifted Edades’ artistic…
-
La Perla de Lucban
This portrait, titled La Perla de Lucban (The Pearl of Lucban), is characteristic of the foto-óleo technique, where paint is applied directly onto a black-and-white photograph to bring depth and color to the subject. Created in 1891 by the Filipino artist Fabian de la Rosa, this piece captures Maria Isabel Nepomuceno de Ordoveza, who had…
-
Damian Domingo’s portrait: A note on materiality
Fig. 1 Damian Domingo, self-portrait, gouache on oval-shaped ivory sheet, 6.1 cm x 4.8 cm, 1826. Source: Ayala Museum. What is known of Domingo’s physical appearance comes from a miniature painted on an ivory sheet in 1826, which is also the oldest known self-portrait made in the Philippines. All catalogs and previous scholarship on the…