One of the country’s most important art treasures, if not the most, is Juan Luna’s Spoliarium.
The oil on canvas painting depicting dead gladiators being dragged from the arena won a first-class medal at the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1884 and is currently displayed at the main gallery on the ground floor of the National Museum of Fine Arts.
More than 100 years later, art collector and Salcedo Auctions director Richie Lerma received a mysterious email from a private collector based in Spain, saying they are in possession of the boceto (sketch or study) of Luna’s Spoliarium.
The email, Lerma said, had photographs of the boceto showing the details of the brush strokes and, the detail which intrigued the Filipino art collector the most, the signature of Juan Luna—done in the artist’s distinctive bold letters SPOLIARIVM = boceto, the baybayin symbols that reads BU LA = LVNA (bulan is the Ilocano word for moon), and R1883 which refers to where and when Luna painted the artwork, in this case in Rome in the year 1883.
“The signature area on the bottom right-hand corner of the painting was what convinced me to investigate further more,” said Lerma.
He continued, “When you look at that particular painting, the manner in which the artist signed it is unhesitating. The R is very telling, it’s the same R that you see in the Roma of the 1884 Spoliarium.”
Lerma’s catalogue on the analysis of boceto stated “the writing on the boceto and those on art historically accepted, exhibited, and published works by Luna matched: from the block letters that spell out the title of the artwork and the artist’s name, to the distinctive manner in which the ‘R’ preceding the year ‘1883’ echoed the manner in which the ‘R’ in ‘Roma’ had been inscribed on the other known works by Luna that he had painted in the city.”
Finally, Lerma said that under the UV light test, the signature disappears, which means the signature was painted at the same time the picture was being painted.
The artwork, which made its way to Spain is now in the Philippines as part of the art pieces to go under the hammer at Salcedo Auctions’ The Well-Appointed Life auction on Sept. 22-23 at the Rigodon Ballroom of The Peninsula Manila.
Aside from the boceto, other notable works by Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, Felix Martinez, and Fernando Amorsolo, as well as fine jewelry and timepieces, rare automobiles, and connoisseur collector items will be auctioned off.
