All about portraits
First of 4 parts
LATE last year, Lisa Guerrero Nakpil, a commissioner of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP), and an advocate for public history, asked me to write a chapter on some of the most important portraits in Philippine history. Eventually, I found myself as one of the authors of the art book, “It’s All About Faces,” alongside seasoned cultural experts and writers like Lisa, Cora Alvina, Cid Reyes, Carlomar Daoana and Jerome Gomez, featuring the Atencio-Libunao Art Collection. Since the book was published privately, I will be serializing some of the things I wrote in this column in the next few weeks for the benefit of the public.
There are many today who believe that a portrait, especially one in oil on canvas, is not only expensive but “old school,” out of fashion or even passé. After all, photography has been around since the mid-19th century to capture the realistic likeness of a person. Perhaps the best and most convincing, straightforward answer on the merits of an oil depiction is from a notable portraitist Igor V. Babailov, honorary academician of the Russian Academy of Arts:
“Since having a portrait painted is usually a once-in-a-lifetime experience, every credential should be considered, including the artist’s ability to work from life. If you’re thinking to hire an artist to copy a readymade image of a photograph, you may as well just enlarge that photo and save yourself a lot of money. However, remember: photographs don’t last, as they start fading immediately after they are taken.
“If you are thinking of the true luxury of a fine art portrait in the tradition of the masters, to pass it on to your descendants and future generations, look beyond the price tag, as in the long run, your descendants are going to inherit what we purchased for them...
“According to scientific research, it takes 450 years for oil paint [or oil paintings] to dry completely. This is why today, the beautiful Renaissance paintings look as ‘fresh’ as if they were painted yesterday. A photograph, on the other hand, starts to deteriorate immediately after it has been taken and fades visibly in 30-50 years...”
Also, Babailov adds that these
portraits increase in value, not just monetarily but as “historic objects” in their own right. He noted that 90 percent of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the largest art museum in the Americas, are commissioned portraits painted from life. He further said that the portraits of business and political leaders and celebrities whose names have made history also take with them the artists’ names who have officially painted them.
The Philippine National Museum of Fine Arts holds a large collection of important portraits of historic personalities or portraits done by Filipino masters. Photographs, mostly black and white, of these men and women to be found in textbooks do not come close to seeing their actual portraits because the experience
of examining them up close and personal, so to speak, mimics meeting them in full color, especially those done in life by an artist contemporaneous to
his subject.
For many years, the public did not know that Fernando Amorsolo apparently painted a colored portrait of the national hero José Rizal, now on loan to the National Museum. Amorsolo painted most of his portraits from life but did not have the same opportunity as the hero. Since a Rizal portrait is not usual, he had to put in elements that would make the painting unique: Rizal is thus shown sitting with an open book in his hand, symbolizing his emphasis on the centrality of education in freedom and identity-building. It also symbolizes his works that helped our people form the national sentiment. Rizal is painted perhaps in one of his rooms in Europe, seated at a desk filled with stacks of paper which denote his studiousness. Amorsolo also wanted to capture the Philippines’ foremost hero as an artist himself, so he painted beside him his famous sculpture “The Triumph of Science Over Death” to his right and a sketch behind him to his left. The sculpture was perhaps Rizal’s most important artwork, summarizing his belief in the Enlightenment and that science would eventually triumph over superstition and ignorance. That ignorance is the real death of the nation and knowledge; “scientia,” or reason, is the antidote to that.
The lady in the sketch was first unidentifiable. Being familiar with some of the Rizal sketches, however, I could confidently tell National Museum Director General Jeremy Barns that the sketch was that of Rizal’s elder sister, Saturnina, and Amorsolo skillfully rendered it in this portrait.