GE 4 MODULE 3 SEMI FINAL [The Parisian Life; Spoliarium]

Lesson 1: The Parisian Life

THE PARISIAN LIFE

The Parisian Life

French: Interior d'un Cafi

Artist Juan Luna

Year 1892

Dimensions 57 cm × 79 cm (22 in × 31 in)

Location National Museum of Fine Arts

On loan from the Government Service Insurance
System

The Parisian Life, also known as Interior d'un Cafi (also spelled Interior d’Un Café, literally meaning
"Inside a Café"), is an 1892 oil on canvas impressionist painting by Filipino painter and revolutionary activist Juan
Luna. The painting presently owned by the Government Service Insurance System is currently exhibited at
the National Museum of Fine Arts after the state pension fund transferred management of its collection to the
National Museum in March 2012.
Measuring 57 cm × 79 cm (22 in × 31 in), The Parisian Life is one of the masterpieces that Luna created
when he stayed in Paris, France from October 1884 to February 1893. His own personal “Parisian life” was a total
of eight years. This period in Luna's career in painting is known as the post-academic or the Parisian period, a time
when his style moved away from having “dark colors of the academic palette” and became “increasingly lighter in
color and mood”. As an artist, Luna became renowned on the European continent and became “a familiar of
the French and Spanish royal courts”. During the period, apart from his heightening artistry Luna was also
participating in the Philippine propaganda movement together with José Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines.
Months after painting The Parisian Life, Luna would be departing from Paris to Madrid, Spain then to Manila,
Philippines in 1894 in order to rejoin Rizal and Dr. Ariston Bautista Lin, and perform his role in the Philippine
Revolution and war of independence in 1896.
During this time, Luna also had to deal with the death of an infant daughter and the alleged extra-marital
affair of his wife Paz Pardo de Tavera with a French physician. Because of jealousy, Luna killed his wife and
his mother-in-law. Luna also attempted to kill his brother-in-law. A French court charged Luna for committing a
"crime of passion"[ but was acquitted of parricide and murder on February 7, 1893.
The Parisian Life is regarded as the last major work Luna did during his post-academic and life in Paris
because from 1894 Luna travelled frequently that he was only able to paint a few number of landscapes in the
Philippines. When Luna returned to France in 1898, he was an appointed member of the delegation in Paris
representing the Philippine revolutionary government tasked to work for the diplomatic recognition of the
Philippines as an independent Republic. In 1899, Luna died in Hong Kong while on the way back to the Philippines.

Description
Painted a few months prior to September 1892, a time when Luna would be “caught up in dramatic
events” that lead to a “heroic path”, The Parisian Life has a “playful” and “relaxed mood” that does not provide
“the slightest hint of the tumultuous happenings to come” in Luna's personal life. It portrayed a scene inside a café
in Paris with a woman identified as a courtesan or a prostitute representing "fallen womanhood", who was about
to rise from a sofa overshadowing three men placed at the far left corner of the painting. Apart from the
prominent figure of the female wearing a pale lavender frock and a hat embellished with flowers, fronted by two
glasses of beers and an empty beer mug belying a "company of men", The Parisian Life portrayed a glimpse of
Luna's own life in the capital of France while accompanied by two close friends.
The painted illustration captured the gathering of three significant personas and heroes in Philippine
History having a discussion about the Philippines “on the eve of momentous events” during the springtime in Paris.
The three gentlemen dressed in European garb – top hats and coats – at the left of the image are Luna himself,
José Rizal, and Ariston Bautista Lin, who were on an “expedition” during a casual evening in a café believed to be
named as Maxim’s, brimming with self-confidence while enjoying a moment inside the café. They were described
as Filipino gentlemen who “embraced Western lifestyle while remaining (...) Filipino at heart.” In the painting Rizal
was with a half-turned back, Luna was at the center seated in a cheerful mood, and Lin was sitting closest to the
lady in the portrait and characterized to be the person with the “most vivid expression” among the three
gentlemen throwing an inquisitive glance toward the woman. The evident intimate mood of the painting was
further enhanced by Luna by placing the details of the deserted hat and cape, the pulled-out chair, and the coat on
the sofa. According to Eric Zerrudo, the director of the Museum of the Government Service Insurance
System during a lecture at a week-long SM Mall exhibit, the woman in The Parisian Life has a
"geographical likeness" to the mirror-image of the archipelago of the Philippines. Furthermore, Zerrudo mentioned
that the woman has a dark neck, the woman was placed with her head in a window joint resulting to having the
effect of a sort of "antenna jutting out" of the head. The dark neck and the window joint line showed that as if the
woman was being strangled, conveying the message that the Philippines was under stress.
As a cultural and historical artwork, The Parisian Life does not solely embody the “intangible ideas of the
Filipino national consciousness” but also Luna's talent as an artist. The Parisian Life painting proves that Luna is an
“indefatigable painter of women”. It also proves that Luna was an “enthusiastic observer of the fairer sex”, an
artist who had a “keen eye” for the “elusive psychology” of women, and a painter with an “obviously sensitive
insight into” women's fragility, strength, happiness, and solemnity. The Parisian Life further proved that Luna was
sensitive and skillful in capturing a fleeting moment of ordinary life that he could imbue with “personality and
universal emotions”.
Documentation and exhibition
The original owner of the painting was Ariston Bautista Lin and his family. Before its modern-day
exhibition at Christie's auction house in Hong Kong, The Parisian Life was featured on page 147 of Santiago Albano
Pilar's book entitled Juan Luna, The Filipino as Painter published in 1980. Pilar's book was published by the Eugenio
Lopez Foundation. Pilar reproduced the copy of the painting from the Luis Araneta collection. After Luna
completed The Parisian Life it was exhibited only once for public viewing, an exhibition held in 1904 at the World's
Fair’s Saint Louis Exposition in the United States, where it won as a silver medalist. Apart from being accompanied
by a Saint Louis Exposition certificate, Christie’s Hong Kong gave it an estimated price tag of HK$1,800,000 -
HK$2,000,000, an equivalent of $231,921 - $257,690. Despite this price estimate, the GSIS Museum, a Philippine-
government owned and controlled corporation, bought the painting from Christie's Hong Kong in October 2002 for
the price of $870,000[5] (P 45.4 to 46 million). After procuring Luna’s The Parisian Life from Christie’s, the GSIS
Museum toured the painting around the Philippines. In January 2004, The Parisian Life’s final destination for the
tour was the University of Santo Tomas’s Museum of Arts and Sciences (the oldest museum in the Philippines),
where other two Luna paintings are parts of the university’s art collection, namely the Playa de
Kamakura (“Kamakura Bay”) and The Italian Soldier.

GE 4 MODULE 3 ACTIVITY 1 [ The Parisian Life]

1. Write the short biography of Ariston Bautista Lin.

2. Bakit ‘’Parisian Life” ang titulo ng dibuho?
3. Sino ang babae sa dibuho?, ano ang ipinapahayag nito?
4. Paano ipinakilala ng dibuho si Juan Luna?

Lesson 2: Spoliarium

Spoliarium as displayed in the National Museum of the Philippines.

The Spoliarium (often misspelled Spolarium) is a painting by Filipino painter Juan Luna. Luna, working

on canvas, spent eight months completing the painting which depicts dying gladiators. The painting was submitted
by Luna to the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1884 in Madrid, where it garnered the first gold medal (out of
three) The picture recreates a despoiling scene in a Roman circus where dead gladiators are stripped of weapons
and garments. Together with other works of the Spanish Academy, the Spoliarium was on exhibit in Rome in April
1884.
In 1886, the painting was sold to the Diputación Provincial de Barcelona for 20,000 pesetas. It currently hangs in
the main gallery at the first floor of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Manila, and is the first work of art that
greets visitors upon entry into the museum. The National Museum considers it the largest painting in the
Philippines with dimensions of 4.22 meters x 7.675 meters.
Filipino historian Ambeth Ocampo writes, "...the fact remains that when Luna and Félix Resurrección Hidalgo won
the top awards in the Madrid Exposition of 1884, they proved to the world that indios could, despite their
supposed barbarian race, paint better than the Spaniards who colonized them."

Jose Rizal and the Spoliarium

At a gathering of Filipino expatriates in Madrid, Jose Rizal enthusiastically toasted the triumphs his two
compatriots had achieved, the other being Félix Hidalgo who won a silver medal, calling it "fresh proof of racial
equality".
"Luna's Spoliarium with its bloody carcasses of slave gladiators being dragged away from the arena where
they had entertained their Roman oppressors with their lives... stripped to satisfy the lewd contempt of their
Roman persecutors with their honor...." Rizal was footnoted in his speech that the Spoliarium, "embodied the
essence of our social, moral and political life: humanity in severe ordeal, humanity unredeemed, reason and
idealism in open struggle with prejudice, fanaticism and injustice."
Rizal was inspired to carve a mark of his own to give glory to his country by writing his
'Spoliarium' since early that year 1884 "he had been toying with the idea of a book" for he has seen and
described the painting as "the tumult of the crowd, the shouts of slaves, the metallic clatter of dead men's
armor, the sobs of orphans, the murmured prayers..." Rizal's book would be called Noli Me Tangere, "the
Latin echo of the Spoliarium".

Return to the Philippines

In 1885, the painting was bought (while still in Paris) by the provincial government of Barcelona
(Diputación Provincial de Barcelona) for 20,000 pesetas, after being exhibited in Rome, Madrid, and Paris. It was
transferred to the Museo del Arte Moderno in Barcelona in 1887, where it was in storage until the museum was
burned and looted during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. Under orders of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the
damaged painting was sent to Madrid for restoration, where it stayed for 18 years. The calls for the painting's
transfer to Manila by Filipinos and sympathetic Spaniards in the 1950s led to Gen. Franco's orders to finish the
painting's restoration and eventual donation to the Philippines. The painting was turned over to Ambassador Nieto
in January 1958 after the restoration work done in late 1957.
The Spoliarium was sent to the Philippines in 1958 as a gift from the government of Spain under orders of
Generalissimo Francisco Franco. It was broken up into three pieces, with each piece going into its own shipping
crate, because of its size. The painting was mounted on a wooden frame at the then Department of Foreign Affairs
building (current-day Department of Justice building as of June 2020) on Padre Faura Street. Artist Antonio
Dumlao] was chosen by Carlos da Silva, as head of the Juan Luna Centennial Commission, to perform relining and
cleaning of the painting. The mounting, framing, and architectural work was done by Carlos da Silva. A newly
restored Spoliarium was then unveiled in the Hall of Flags of the Department of Foreign Affairs in December 1962.
The painting was cleaned by Suzanno "Jun" Gonzalez in 1982. In 2005, another restoration was made by
Art Restoration and Conservations Specialists Inc., headed by painter June Poticar Dalisay.

GE 4 MODULE 3 ACTIVITY 2 [ Spoliarium]

1. Write the short biography of Juan Luna.

2. Give three reasons why Spoliaruim is important to the grand narrative of Philippine history.