Month: April 2026
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Setting the record straight: Joaquín Pardo de Tavera y Gómez (9 November 1829, San Roque, Cavite – 19 March 1885, Paris)
Online sources are unreliable for the visual identification and basic biography of Joaquín Pardo de Tavera y Gómez. Google results and highly visited websites often confuse him with other members of the Pardo de Tavera family. I asked fellow historians but none could offer a definite visual identification of the important historical figure. So I…
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Protected: Botong Francisco’s Emilio Aguinaldo and the Philippine Revolution woodcarving panel executed by Paete woodcarvers (1964)
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Shells and Catholic Ritual
A set of giant clam shell holy water fonts from the Philippines is installed inside the Sagrada Família. According to a spot.ph article by Micah Avry Guiao, published on 4 November 2025, These objects were presented as a national gift to Spain in 2010. The installation consists of six shells of Tridacna gigas (taclobo), positioned…
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Death of Cleopatra, an art historical dialogue
Juan Luna’s The Death of Cleopatra (1881) strikes me first for its contrast with motion and stillness. Cleopatra is already dead. Her body lies stretched across a richly adorned bed at the centre of the composition, draped in diaphanous fabric and jewellery, her torso partially exposed, her head tilted back in a pose that suggests…
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Doubting Thomas, an Easter Egg
The Feast of the Resurrection has just passed and now its time to return to work and to Manila traffic. I find myself going back to old emails. In them, I notice Vince Rafael’s last email and the profile picture he once used: a detail from The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio. It feels,…
Geronimo Cristobal 