{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":56561,"auction_id":110,"set_id":144,"lot_number":"135","artist":"Juan Luna y Novicio (1857 - 1899)","title":"Claro de Luna en la Laguna de Venecia\n(Moonlight on the Lagoon of Venice)","starting_price":7000000,"signed_dated":"signed, dated and inscribed “Lvna Venecia 87” (lower\nright)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"20\" x 49 1/4\" (51 cm x 125 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":":\nAcquired directly from the Artist by the 1st Conde de Romanones, Alvaro\nde Figueroa.","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Juan Luna and the Corridors of Power The Painter and the Conde de Romanones by MARTIN ARNALDO
Today, it is difficult to grasp how firmly Juan Luna and the other Filipino ilustrados of the 19th century once stood at the core of Spanish art and politics. The rupture of 1898, when Spain lost the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, pushed the two countries apart in culture and identity, and Luna’s name — once most famous in Spain — faded into obscurity on the peninsula.
It is now an opportune moment to examine the studios and friendships that first shaped Luna’s reputation — ties that continued to influence art and politics even after his death.
Juan Luna’s artistic journey began under the strict supervision of Agustín Sáez, the headmaster of Manila’s Escuela de Dibujo y Pintura on Cabildo. Sáez was a discípulo (student) of José de Madrazo, the director of Madrid’s Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, and he upheld a rigid curriculum rooted in 17th-century Spanish art, leaving little room for creative freedom. After what was likely a tumultuous relationship with Sáez, Lorenzo Guerrero, who had mentored Luna, persuaded his parents to send him to Spain. Art critic and painter Aguilar Cruz observed, “It is probable that Luna, never known for meekness, had offended his teachers by his refusal to submit to their artistic doctrines.”
After leaving Manila, Luna enrolled at Madrid’s Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where he studied color and composition under Federico de Madrazo, the son of José de Madrazo. As director of the academy, Federico imposed the same rigid, traditional style as his father. Unsurprisingly, Luna’s stay under Federico lasted barely a year. In 1878 he left Madrid for Rome in the company of Spanish painter Alejo Vera, his new mentor and the person he called his “second father” away from home.
Frustrated by rigid academic doctrines in Madrid, Luna found freedom in Rome’s vibrant artistic community of Spanish and international artists at the Circolo Artistico Internazionale. Following his success at the Exposición de Bellas Artes in 1881, where he won a Medalla de segunda clase (silver medal) for the Death of Cleopatra, his studio on Via Margutta became a gathering place for admirers eager to witness his creative process as he prepared his next masterpiece, Spoliarium. According to a November 1, 1903, article in The Sun, King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Italy paid him an unexpected visit at his studio. In March 1884, Mariano Benlliure captured a memorable scene in which Luna presented Spoliarium to the king at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni.
Among those who became part of Luna’s Roman circle was the young law student Álvaro de Figueroa y Torres, who, after completing his studies in Bologna, spent a season in Rome before returning to Madrid. In his memoirs, he recalls lively days shared with Luna; José, Juan Antonio and Mariano Benlliure, whose studio was adjacent to Luna’s; and with the young artist and future politician, Mateo Silvela, son of the influential senator Manuel Silvela y de Le Vielleuze. The friendships formed in that Roman interlude proved lasting. Silvela’s father would later be appointed as the Spanish ambassador to France and would be a key figure in acting as Luna’s intermediary for financial advances on the commission for the Battle of Lepanto. During his early days in Paris, Luna worked tirelessly on the Senate commission for it, a painting intended to be displayed opposite Francisco Pradilla’s Rendición de Granada in the Salón de Conferencias of the Spanish Senate. As Juan Luna’s artistic journey in Europe continued, the circle that had gathered on Via Margutta expanded its influence beyond the studios of Rome. What began as a bohemian brotherhood would become a network of influence in Madrid’s corridors of power. Álvaro de Figueroa y Torres, the young law student who once lingered in Luna’s studio, rose to prominence in the Liberal Party. He became the 1st Count of Romanones in 1893 and served three times as prime minister of Spain between 1912 and 1919. His ascent was marked by sharp political instincts and a commanding presence. Despite a childhood carriage accident that left him with a limp, often exaggerated by caricaturists, it became a distinguishing feature, making him instantly recognizable.
His political opponent, whom he mentions often in his memoirs, was the Conservative leader Francisco Silvela y de Le Vielleuze, brother of the more liberal Manuel Silvela, who had defended Luna. Romanones wrote: “Yet, drawing strength from weakness, I faced the wrath of Cánovas and Silvela, and by a significant majority, victory was granted to me.” Incidentally, his older brother José was Francisco’s brother-in-law, as both had married sisters: María Rosario and Amalia Loring y Heredia.
Alongside this long political career Romanones was also active in the arts: he directed the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando for nearly forty years, the longest tenure in the institution’s history, joined the Prado board, and commissioned or supported leading painters and sculptors. Perhaps due to the friendship that had formed in Rome, Mariano Benlliure was able to count him among his most constant patrons.
Several years after Luna’s passing, in a letter to Alfonso de Aguilar, the private secretary of Queen María Cristina, dated May 29, 1906, Benlliure recounted how Count Romanones had visited his studio to review the bust he was sculpting of Princess Victoria Eugenia. Romanones assured him that the likeness was exceptional, stating that it was as accurate as if it had been sculpted from life. In 1907 he asked Benlliure to design a full ceramic cycle for the dining room of his new Madrid townhouse. Romanones rejected the final drawings only because the playful nudes might scandalize guests. In 1911, as president of the Spanish Congress of Deputies, Romanones commissioned Mariano Benlliure for the statue of Emilio Castelar for the Congress. In 1929, Archer M. Huntington commissioned Benlliure to create a bronze of the Count of Romanones for the Hispanic Society of America, as part of a small series depicting leading Spaniards from the reign of Alfonso XIII. He died in Madrid in 1950, leaving a large archive and an art collection that has been gradually dispersed by his heirs.
From that cramped warren of studios on Via Margutta emerged lives that would reshape both art and politics. Those Roman days were no footnote but the hinge on which destinies turned. A few formative years in Rome wove a network so durable that, decades later, and even after Luna’s death, it still secured commissions, shaped policies, and kept Filipino genius woven into the fabric of Spain’s artistic life.
The Conde de Romanones Juan Luna Luna and His Love for the Sea by LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL
The highly evocative ‘Claro de Luna en la Laguna de Venecia’ — featuring bragagnas, the traditional Venetian fishing boats, floating magically between sea and sky, on the city’s lagoon — opens the doors to two important events in Juan Luna’s life.
The first was at the very beginning of his life as a boy entering the world of adventure on the high seas; and the other at the apex of his career, intertwined with his successive triumphs at the Madrid Salons and his marriage to the heiress Paz Pardo de Tavera in late 1886. That honeymoon was spent in Venice where he would also create “Hymen, oh Hymenee”, Luna’s long-lost masterpiece that would finally come to Manila 134 years after it was painted.
Like ‘Hymenee’, it would also symbolize Juan Luna’s acceptance in the highest echelons not just of Filipino society but also his friendship with the most influential members of the Spanish aristocracy.
The first Conde of Romanones, Alvaro de Figueroa, would recall in his autobiography ‘Notas de Una Vida (Notes to a Life), 1868 -1912, how he would make the acquaintance of Juan Luna in Rome, in the artists’ colony on Via Margutta. Here, he met the Benlliure brothers, familiars of the King of Spain Alfonso XIII — and Mateo Silvela, all artists. The Romanones and the Silvelas would later be joined in marriage and the Prime Minister xx Silvela would be one of the staunchest champions of Luna’s royal commission of ‘The Battle of Lepanto.’
It is a little-known fact that Juan Luna enrolled in the Escuela Nautica de Manila, which had been established in 1820 a few years after the end of the Galleon Trade. What is even more astonishing is that he did so at the age of 12, the very minimum age to gain entrance into the school and a requirement to make sure that prospective students knew how to read and write in Spanish. Thus, in 1869, Juan Luna entered the school along with his older brother Manuel Andres, who was 13 years old.
For the precocious, intrepid Luna, it was apparently just a device entirely of his own making to find his way out of Manila and make his way in the world. Biographer E. Arsenio Manuel would write, “After finishing the primera enseñanza in 1869, he left the Ateneo Municipal de Manila and enrolled in the Escuela Nautica, not to pursue a naval career to be sure, but perhaps to accustom himself and his parents with the pangs of separation. After finishing the theoretical course, Juan and Manuel learned practical navigation on a ship which plied the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, touching such ports as Hongkong, Amoy (China), Singapore, Batavia (Indonesia), and Colombo (Ceylon).”
Jose Rizal would later reveal that ‘besides widening their horizons and experience, Manuel, who was to become a violinist later, heard harmonies in the waves and Juan saw combinations of light, tones and colors.’
E. Arsenio Manuel would also write, “While these voyages were but a means to an end, he never abandoned his golden dream of one day becoming a painter. While his boat was at anchor in Manila Bay or at the quay, he took drawing lessons under Lorenzo Guerrero.” It would take him five years to receive the certificate of piloto de altos mares tercer clase (pilot of the high seas third class). Immediately after that milestone, and at the age of 17, he would be accepted in the Academia de Dibujo y Pintura in Manila. For one reason or another, he would leave the academy and strike out to Madrid in 1877, with his beloved brother Manuel. Juan would enroll at the Real Academia de las Bellas Artes de San Fernando and begin his unstoppable trajectory to the stratosphere of acclaim.
In just one year, he would meet his mentor Alejo Vera, move to Rome, fall into the company of the Benlliure brothers and Mateo Silvela — and meet the Conde de Romanones — in the Via Margutta, sharing quarters, studios and adventures.
Claro de Luna en la Laguna de Venecia” could very well be an allegory of Juan Luna’s life at this point — perceived by the Spanish press as to be walking on water and on his way to the heavens, after winning the gold medal for the Spoliarium in 1884.
The bragagnas depicted in the painting take their name from the peculiarly shaped nets used for a kind of sidetrawling on the lagoon. These nets and their boats were being produced as late as the 1940s, but sadly their distinctive shapes, outlined with the white stripes as seen in this canvas, can now only be found in the Museo Storico Navale of Venice or the Venetian naval museum. The vessels are built to allow them to fish in the waters of the lagoon which can be a single meter shallow in some parts and no more than ten in others. They are depicted moored around a line of timber pilings of strong oak, which also form the foundations of the city known as La Serenessima. They provide a sense of strength and a certain brooding formality to the fluid forms of the shapes of the vessels. Luna is able to paint the boats with extraordinary accuracy, their masts, sails, rudders, and nets — all are captured with both the detailed eye and sensibility of a sailor. Ironically, seascapes are a rarity for Juan Luna, unlike the dreamy horizons of his contemporary Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo who had a fascination for water. Luna, however, imbues it with his own perspective of the working man — he was among the first social realists of his age, capturing gypsies, flower sellers, steel workers. Here, in a few elegant but vital and tiny strokes, he captures fishermen unloading their catch in huge baskets, the others look out solitarily to sea. Because of the space and distance from the viewer, the boats appear suspended in both time and space against the clouds and waves.
Importantly, “Claro de Luna” foretells Luna’s next most important work, “La Batalla de Lepanto” (The Battle of Lepanto), the most important naval battle of Christendom, which commemorated the triumph of the Holy League against the Ottoman Empire. Philip II (who the Philippines would be named after and was named “the most Catholic of kings”) would lead the victory, alongside the Republic of Venice and other states, against Suleiman the Magnificent. King Alfonso XIII would give Luna this commission, a signal honor to satisfy the public clamor that he be properly recognized for the beauty and power of “Spoliarium.”
La Condesa Aline de Romanones by ISIDRA REYES
Born in the Rockland County hamlet of Pearl River, New York, Mary Aline Dexter Griffith was born on 23 May 1923, though some records state 1920. Her lineage was middle class. Her father, William, manufactured printing press equipment at a plant owned by her grandfather and sold real estate and insurance on the side. Her mother, the former Marie Dexter, was said to have descended from the Pilgrims. She graduated with a degree in Literature, History, and Journalism from the College of Mount Vincent, a Roman Catholic school run by the Sisters of Charity in the Bronx, New York.
A fetching young lady, she worked as a model for the Viennese-born fashion designer, Hattie Carnegie, in Manhattan. But Aline wanted more excitement in life than just looking pretty. It was World War II and she sought to serve her country overseas but was told that she was too young. Not long after, she went on a blind date with a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. She was recruited and trained as a secret agent and was sent to Madrid as a code clerk deciphering messages at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, a city then teeming with moles, spies, and Nazis. Her code name was “Tiger” and she posed as a socialite employed by American oil companies.
In one of the socials she attended in Madrid, she met and caught the eye of Luis de Figueroa y Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno. He bore the Spanish title, El Conde de Quintanilla, and later inherited the title, El Conde de Romanones. He was a painter and the grandson of Alvaro de Figueroa y Torres, the first El Conde de Romanones, who served as Prime Minister of Spain three times from 1912-1918, Senate President, Mayor of Madrid, cabinet minister, and president of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. (This was the very same school that Luna attended.)
His father, Luis, El Conde de Figueroa, was a polo player who participated as member of the Spanish team at the 1924 Paris Olympics. An heir to one of the great Spanish fortunes at the time with titles on the side, the younger Luis was a prize catch for Aline.
Luis and Aline were married in Madrid in 1947 in a wedding attended by Luis’ grandfather and members of the Spanish nobility and was covered by local newspapers in Pearl River, New York with the headline, “Her Romance in Madrid Makes NY Girl Countess.” From then on, Aline, La Condesa de Quintanilla and later La Condesa de Romanones, made her steady ascent as one of the members of international society. Always well-coiffed and impeccably dressed, her fabled life as an international jetsetter was widely covered in glossy magazines like Vogue and Hola and was photographed partying with celebrity friends such as Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor and film stars, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, and Ava Gardner; watching a bullfight in Seville with US First Lady Jackie Kennedy and the Duquesa de Alba; and posing for fashion spreads in fashion magazines in her homes in Spain and her Park Avenue apartment in New York. One of her good friends was Philippine First Lady Imelda R. Marcos and was said to have once visited Manila as her guest.
But despite a promise to her husband that she would stop her espionage activities upon their marriage, she continued her life as an undercover spy for many years. As she once told the Los Angeles Times, posing as a socialite before she became one was a good cover. “With that, nobody’s going to think you’re doing anything worthwhile, except putting on your make-up or something.” she said. She wrote about her life as an undercover spy in a series of best-selling books entitled, The Spy Wore Red, The Spy Went Dancing, The Spy Wore Silk; and The End of an Epoch. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, critic Michael Gross labeled her genre as “café espionage.” While most dismissed most of the exploits she wrote about as pure fiction, Aline insisted that her stories “are all based in truth.” Charles Pinck, the president of the O.S.S. Society wrote of the countess in an E-Mail quoted in her New York Times obituary: “She epitomized why it was said that O.S.S. stood for ‘Oh So Social,’ as many of its members were drawn from the Social Register. Aline passed away in Madrid in 2017 and was survived by her three sons, Alvaro, Luis, and Miguel, and thirteen grandchildren.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":12000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":12000000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":14419200,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":60346,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/110/144/lot/135.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":60520,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/110/144/lot/135c.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":60451,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/110/144/lot/135b.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":60448,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/110/144/lot/135a.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":134,"next":136,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}