WALA LANG
It is as if Juan Luna (1857-1899) has just laid down his brushes and standing proudly, almost defiantly, before his prize-winning Spoliarium, proclaims, “There. Try and better that.” The painting and the artist—then 27 years old—as he was in the very year that he finished his masterwork, are now together in the grand hall of the National Museum of Fine Arts.
The portrait bust was actually in the same building 78 years ago when it was thought to have gone forever with the building’s destruction in February 1945 during the Battle of Manila. In fact, the bust survived but had been unrecognized by most, maybe by all—until last week when on Oct. 10, the bust was turned over by MIB Capital Corporation chairperson Marilou C. Cristobal to National Museum chairman Andoni Aboitiz in the presence of the First Lady Lisa Araneta Marcos.
The magazine cover that started it all. (from Isidra Reyes)
Luna had enrolled in Manila’s Academia de Dibujo y Pintura but there was no chemistry between him and his professors and he either quit or was expelled. Undeterred, the young man traveled to Spain in 1875 and briefly attended the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. He decided he wasn’t learning much and decided to join a professor, Alejo Vera, who was doing work in Rome. There he continued to paint, winning a silver medal in the 1881 Madrid Exposición Nacionál de Bellas Artes for La Muerte de Cleopatra now hanging in the Museo Nacionál del Prado and a gold medal in the 1884 Exposición for Spoliarium.
While in Rome, Luna met and became friends with the Spanish brothers Benlliure—Mariano, a sculptor, and Juan Antonio, a painter. In time, Mariano achieved renown as one of Spain’s best sculptors, responsible for numerous monuments in Spain and abroad. Juan Antonio continued painting as did Luna who achieved both notoriety (for parricide) and fame not only as painter but also as hero during the Philippine Revolution and the Filipino-American War.
Decades later, Spanish friends of the Philippines decided to offer a gift to the Filipino people in the form of a full-size replica of Luna’s Spoliarium (the original was then in a Spanish museum) and a bust of the artist. Back in 1884, Mariano Benlliure had made a clay bust of his friend Juan Luna and it was cast in bronze by Mir y Ferrero Fundidores of Madrid. Juan Antonio Benlliure was commissioned to paint the replica of Luna’s prize winner. Leading members of Manila’s Spanish-Filipino community participated in the project and both bust and painting were formally presented to Governor General Leonard Wood on Oct. 12, 1922.
The bust and the painting were exhibited in the Ayuntamiento and on completion of the Legislative Building (now the National Museum of Fine Arts), the painting was transferred to Congress and the bust to the National Library.
The Burnham Plan had located government buildings including a Capitol in the present Rizal Park. A library and museum building was part of the plan. A decision was made, however, for the library and museum building to be the Legislative Building instead, with the House of Representatives and the Senate occupying the second and third floors respectively. The library and museum was allotted the ground floor. This was the arrangement from the time the building was completed in 1926 until the Battle of Manila in February 1945 when Intramuros and districts south of the Pasig were devastated.
A COLORFUL A bust of Juan Luna by Mariano Benlliure. (Photo by Richie Lerma)
The Japanese decided to fortify the government buildings in the area and the library was given a few days’ notice to move its hundreds of thousands of books and museum pieces. With nothing but cariton, the handful of dedicated library staff on duty hauled the most valuable objects—Rizal manuscripts and Tabacalera book collection rarities—across Taft Avenue to the Philippine Normal College (PNC) under cannon fire and falling bombs. Then the Japanese directed that PNC also be vacated. All the staff could do was to hurriedly transfer to a City Hall vault just a few of what they had been able to move.
After the smoke cleared, the City Hall vault had been forced open and looted but the PNC material survived, including the original Rizal manuscripts of Noli, Fili and Mi Ultimo Adios. Just about everything else was lost. With hundreds of thousands dead, missing, or wounded, entire districts leveled, hunger, the Huk rebellion, matters like lost books and busts, even those accepted by a Governor General, were deemed trivial and best forgotten.
Life went on and all memory of Benlliure’s bust of Luna vanished.
Isidra Reyes, a curious and tenacious writer on art and history, routinely buys old magazines and just five months ago on May 6, a sukì dealer offered her the Dec. 9, 1967 issue of the Manila Chronicle Sunday Magazine. Its cover featured a Luna bust described as of bronze with the inscription “M. Benlliure, Roma, 1884” and owned by Ireneo U. Cristobal of Taller de Escultura, “who bought it cheap from a pushcart vendor during the liberation.”
Reyes wondered whatever happened to the bronze and promptly got to work. On the Filipinas Heritage Library website, she found a photo of a Luna bust though with no information on its whereabouts. Heritage Library referred Reyes to the University of Santo Tomas museum, where there was indeed a Luna bust. It was plaster painted to look like bronze, however, and was a piece that the museum bought in 1958 from Don Alfonso Ongpin, who in turn probably got it from the artist’s son Andres.
Reyes also remembered a 1957 article written by Carlos da Silva reprinted in 1977 that referred to a gift to the nation of a bust and a Spoliarium replica by a group headed by Spanish Consul General in the Philippines Vicente Palmaroli Reboulet. She succeeded in finding a copy of Executive Order No. 54 S-1922 issued by Governor General Leonard Wood mentioned in da Silva’s article. It listed the Manila donors and members of the committee in charge of the gift’s ceremonial presentation. It was a high-profile event held on Oct. 12, 1922 at the Ayuntamiento’s Salon de Marmol, attended by top brass, including the Governor General himself, Senate President Manuel L. Quezon, and House Speaker Sergio Osmeña, leading businessmen, government officials, artists.
Reyes not only works fast. She shares her discoveries and is one of the top contributors to Facebook’s Manila Nostalgia site. So a week later, on May 15, 2023, she dispatched her findings to Manila Nostalgia’s 28,000 followers.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the public, Multinational Investment Bancorporation’s Ramon “Rey” Ilusorio had identified art objects as a business line and since the 1970s had been quietly building up an inventory. One of the things he bought in 1979 was a bust of Juan Luna by Mariano Benlliure offered by Inday Elsie Cadapan, a Mabini art and antiques dealer. Ilusorio passed away in 2021 and the company, by now named MIB Capital Corporation, decided that with the booming art market, the time has come to cash in.
Thus it was that after releasing an online edition, the printed catalog of the Sept. 16, 2023 Salcedo Auctions (“The Well Appointed Life”) devoted four pages to lot 39, “MARIANO BENLLIURE (1862-1947) / Bust of Juan Luna y Novicio / Molded in Rome, 1884 / Cast in Madrid ca. 1920” with an estimated value of P550,000-600,000. The online edition of the auction catalog acknowledged Isidra Reyes’ May 15 Facebook post as one of its references.
The catalog entry describes the due diligence Salcedo Auctions had conducted, including a reference to the Luna bust that was “lost in the Battle for the liberation of Manila in 1945” and the caveat that the company “cannot fully ascertain” if the object lost is the same as Lot 39. The entry concluded that there are three extant Luna busts: one in the UST museum, a modern replica done by Mulawin Abueva, and Lot 39, “adding further sheen to the historical importance of … the bust.”
In her Manila Nostalgia post of Sept. 8, 2023, after news of the Salcedo Auction offering first came out, Reyes asks, “If it was a donation to the Philippine government, … who rightfully owns it? Since it was last installed at the National Library, does the National Library rightfully own it? What is the provenance of the bust being offered for sale by Salcedo Auctions?”
The object attracted comment on traditional and social media and in Facebook posts of Sept. 14 and 21 Reyes called attention to publicly available material with clues that no one seemed to have noticed. First, the 1938 Gallery of Art History Catalogue of Paintings, Sculpture, and Historical Objects lists a Mariano Benlliure 16-inch-high bust of Juan Luna, which is the exact height of the bust offered at auction. Second, a photograph posted in 2020 by the National Museum itself, of the National Library collection in the Ayuntamiento Marble Hall with the Spoliarium replica hanging on the back wall and, below it, an indistinct image of the Luna bust.
With the outcry, National Museum chairman Aboitiz and director general Barns met with Salcedo Auctions chairman Lerma on Sept. 14, two days before the scheduled auction. They presented a letter asking Lerma to “put the sale of Lot 39, Bust of Juan Luna y Novicio by Mariano Benlliure on hold and that we discuss the matter further at the soonest opportunity, if this is indeed a case where the object is lost public property…”
Salcedo Auction’s Richie Lerma then brought the object’s consignor, MIB Capital Corporation into the picture.
There are gaps in the bust’s provenance. There could have been more than one bronze cast from Benlliure’s original; the scavenger could have found his bust somewhere other than the ruined Legislative Building; the bust Inday Cadapan sold to Multinational might not have been from Cristobal. Resolving the matter might have languished in the Courts for years, but MIB Capital immediately decided to withdraw the object from the auction and to turn it over to the National Museum “as a gesture of goodwill.”
The turnover ceremony of the other week was 101 years almost to the day after it was accepted by Governor General Leonard Wood. It was also a high-profile event (champagne flowed) with Isidra Reyes among the invited guests.
Luna’s bust has led a colorful life. Starting out as Roman clay, it became bronze in Madrid; traveled halfway across the globe; was received by a governor general; was admired by crowds in a hall of marble; was interred in the rubble of World War II; peddled as scrap metal; lodged with saintly images; was displayed in a tourist district shop; was locked in a corporate vault; and most recently, was showcased in an Ayala Avenue showroom.
Thanks to MIB Capital Corporation’s high mindedness and generosity and to Isidra Reyes’ inquiring mind, relentless investigation and social media sharing, the young Luna’s likeness is for now united with the product of his genius.
Notes: (a) Isidra Reyes holds a Master’s Degree in the History of European Decorative arts from a joint program of the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt Museum and Parsons School of Design. She has written numerous articles on art and history and has served on the Heritage Conservation Society Board; (b) Prior to the release of its printed auction catalog, Salcedo Auction posted an online version that cited references of the Lot 39 description including Reyes’ May 15, 2023 Facebook post; (c) Your columnist happens to know that in 1997, some friends bought Arturo Luz collages and a Felix Resurrección Hidalgo drawing from Multinational Investment Bancorporation; and (d) Another Mariano Benlliure bust is across that of Juan Luna in the National Museum, a monument to Arthur Fergusson, an important American Regime official that used to be in the plaza in front of Ermita Church.
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