{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":1767,"auction_id":3,"set_id":4,"lot_number":"80","artist":"Fernando Amorsolo (1892 - 1972)","title":"Elias and Salome","starting_price":5000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1934 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"13\" x 19 3/4\" (33 cm x 50 cm)","property":"PROPERTY FROM THE DON BENITO J. LEGARDA JR. COLLECTION","coa":null,"provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":"Roces, Alfredo R. Amorsolo: 1892 - 1972. Makati City: Filipinas Foundation Inc., 1975. Full color illustration and painting description on page 186.","write_up":"Only the magnificent talent of Fernando Amorsolo could do justice to this moving scene from the lost chapter of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere. It instantly reveals the Maestro as a devoted Rizalist familiar with this little-known part of the hero’s first novel. (His daughter Sylvia Amorsolo Lazo confirmed that indeed “he admired Rizal as a hero, writer and artist.” She added, “Definitely, he had read the Noli and the Fili since Papa painted subjects that referred to Rizal’s life and works.”)
\nElias and Salome would be known as Chapter X, Rizal’s eminent translator Charles Derbyshire would write, partly because Rizal would excise it by writing a large X over its words. It is believed that he did so in order to save money on the book’s printing cost by cutting its pages.
\nFor the work at hand, Amorsolo has faithfully depicted the backdrop of Rizal’s missing scene: The fateful batalan (or porch) perched on the lake’s edge and the chickens in the yard that Salome would tend. He has added, however, a pale aso (dog), perhaps a symbol of Salome’s loyalty and steadfastness, but also as a premonition of tragedy.
\nInterestingly, in the only known photograph of Rizal’s execution, a white dog is also present. An eye-witness account of the soldier Hilario Martinez, of that dark day most significant to our nation, would recount that ‘Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a small dog appeared and ran in circles around Rizal’s fallen body, barking and whimpering.’ Martinez believed that it foretold misfortune. That pup was captured standing near the Spanish soldiers in the famous picture and indeed, it would bode the end of the Spanish empire in the Philippines.
\nSalome is painted as Rizal describes her in his mind’s eye, beautiful but not instantly noticeably, sewing diligently a many-colored camisa (blouse), possibly because it was so well-worn and covered in patches and stitches like the rest of her clothes. She wears a black rosary around her neck, proof of her simple but powerful piety; a single, plain turtle-shell comb is seen in her hair. There is a bower of bamboo trees whose rustling leaves which Salome says gives her comfort on her solitary nights. Elias sits beside her clasping her hand; he is in the middle of bidding her a painful goodbye. Salome clings to the hope that he will nevertheless come home to her little hut even when she has departed, allowing her to dream that they are never apart.
\nAnother presence may also be felt in this painting : Amorsolo’s glorious vista of the mystical Laguna de Bay and the rose-colored sunset sky above it is a third character on its own. He would paint landscapes after all that were inseparable from the people who would till and cultivate it, whose contours, light and shadows would be woven into their lives. Indeed, it was the same for Jose Rizal, a proud son of Laguna, and whose own memories of his beloved lake would also become an eloquent metaphor of his characters’ lives, mirroring or countering their fates with its ebb and flow. (Could that be perhaps Mount Sembrano’s blue outline in the distance?)
\nThat this rare work is from the collection of Don Benito J. Legarda Jr. (1926-2020) makes it even more exceptional. Legarda was a widely respected scholar, an economist by profession and a historian by personal preference. He also had a talent for seeking and acquiring the most extraordinary of Philippine art, books, maps, and religious iconography; and the keen eye and means to pursue them. He came from impeccable pedigree; and was both a patriot and a public servant, serving in the government in various capacities, including the Central Bank.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"
Fernando Amorsolo (1892 - 1972) Elias and Salome signed and dated 1934 (lower right) oil on canvas 13\" x 19 3/4\" (33 cm x 50 cm)