Al Pérez: From 'miracle child' to 'nude awakening' inquirer.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from inquirer.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Published March 3, 2021, 11:30 PM
Salcedo Auctions holds first major Important Philippine Art & Furniture sale for 2021 to commemorate 500 years of cross-cultural encounters
LARGER THAN LIFE This untitled work in oil on canvas, the largest of Elmer Borlongan’s works ever to go on auction, is the jewel of the collection to go under the hammer at Salcedo Auctions’ March 13 sale
Was Ferdinand Magellan the first to circumnavigate the world? No, but we’ll get to that later.
Was Magellan even Spanish? No, he was Portuguese. His name wasn’t even Magellan, it was Fernão de Magalhães. He was a page to queen consort Eleanor and Manuel I of Portugal, who later denied his campaign to sail west, instead of east, in search of a new spice route on suspicions that he was into illegal trading. So he went to King Charles I of Spain, with which Portugal at that time was engaged in intense conflict. In Spain, he was lavished with every opportunity to succeed, so he did. His was “the greatest sea voyage ever undertaken, and the most significant.” So said American historian Laurence Bergreen.
With a starting bid of five million, the super rare
letras y figuras
Views of Manila must have sold for an eye-watering sum in last Saturday’s Leon Gallery auction. It was painted in the 1840s by
José Honorato Lozano (ca. 1815-1885), surely either as a souvenir or as a going away gift to an expat with a Manila trading firm, probably American.
Damian Domingo (1796-1834), one of our earliest artists known by name, pioneered in painting figures as
tipos del pais, i.e.,
sangleyes of various occupations and social standings in typical costumes.
Lozano did him one better by positioning figures such as to form letters that spell out a name or in the auctioned object, a phrase. The galleon trade had just ended and non-Spanish traders were permitted to open shop in the Philippines. They were into exports (e.g., sugar, abaca, coffee), imports (e.g., household goods, textiles, wines), shipping, insurance, etc. Lozano’s works were great mementos and, soon enough, the local gentry commissioned them, too.