Category: prints
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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…
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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…
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A Dutch Print of Batanes, Philippines (1698)
A recent report says Chinese scholars at a 30 June 2026 symposium at Jinan University claimed that China has sovereignty over Batanes, describing the islands as a “natural geographical extension” of Taiwan. Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro rejected the claim as baseless and ludicrous, while the Department of Foreign Affairs stated that Philippine sovereignty over…
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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…
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Josef Selleny’s View of Manila, 1858
When Josef Selleny visited Manila in 1858 as part of the Austrian Novara expedition, the city was a busy Spanish colonial port defined by walls, churches, cigar factories, river traffic, and the movement of hemp, tobacco, and other commodities. Shipping on the Pasig River at Manila belongs to this moment of maritime activity. Signed with…
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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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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…