Spanish Colonial

LITERATURE - Baybayin from Mangyans of Mindoro was one of the only preserved traditional writings of the Filipinos, and the Doctrina Christiana (the teachings of

Christianity) was introduced by the Spaniards.

VISUAL ARTS - Most of the artworks express a hidden desire for rebellion against Spain, such as the Basi Revolt that is a series of 14 paintings by Esteban Villanueva; the Carta Hydrograpica y Chorographica de Ias Yslas Filipinas that is the first scientific map of the Philippines by Francisco Suarez and Nicolas deal Cruz Bagay; the Spolarium of Juan Luna that won as the Gold Medalist in Spain; and the Virgenes Christianas expuestas al Populacho of Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo that won as a Silver Medalist in Madrid, Spain.

ARCHITECTURE - Plaza Complex was introduced; churches were built in cruciform

following the shape of the Latin Cross; Churches are baroque in design but Filipino design was incorporated; and houses are known to be Bahay na Bato/Bahay na Tisa.

SCULPTURE - Santos are made of ivory or wood; relleves are known to be the facade of churches; and the Carroza or the plateria that is a pedestal used in religious Catholic procession where an image is loaded.

MUSIC AND DANCE - Pasyon or Pabasa that narrates about the passion of Christ is introduced in 1742; the kundiman Filipino love song flourish; and the Opening of the Suez Canal -Galleon Trade was performed with the dances Pandanggo, tango, polka, dansa, rigodon, habanera, and jota.

THEATRE - Zarzuela of Sarsuela was developed. It is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular songs, as well as dance. Another is the popularly known Easter pageant, Senakulo, or the Passion Play that is a dramatic presentation depicting the Passion of Jesus Christ: his trial, suffering, and death. It is a traditional part of Lent in several Christian denominations, particularly in the Catholic tradition. Lastly, the Komedya that was created by Spanish priests in 1637. It is a play written to dramatize the recent capture by a Christian Filipino army of an Islamic stronghold. It has different versions which are the Moro-moro of the Tagalogs and the Araguio or Arakyo of Nueva Ecija.

Visual arts in Spanish Colonial Period

Artistic paintings were introduced to the Filipinos in the 16th century when the Spaniards arrived in the Philippines. Spaniards used paintings as religious propaganda to spread Catholicism throughout the Philippines. Paintings appeared mostly on church walls, featured religious figures appearing in Catholic teachings.  Filipinos began creating paintings in the European tradition during the 17th- century Spanish period. Most of the paintings and sculptures between the 19th, and 20th century produced a mixture of religious, political, and landscape art works, with qualities of sweetness, dark, and light.

Visual arts in Post-Spanish Colonial Period (Modern)

Early modernist painters such as Damián Domingo was associated with religious and secular paintings. The art of Juan Luna and Félix Hidalgo showed a trend for political statement.  Artist such as Fernando Amorsolo used post- modernism to produce paintings that illustrated Philippine culture, nature, and harmony.

The Spanish Colonial Tradition In the 16th century, Spanish colonizers aimed to replace indigenous culture with one in the image and likeness of Europe. Art became a handmaiden of religion, serving to propagate the Catholic faith and thus support the colonial order at the same time. Since the Church was the sole patron of the arts up to the 19th century, the practice of art came under the strict supervision of the friars who provided Western models for artists to copy. However, in time, what resulted was not a Western culture, but a colonial culture marked by a fusion of indigenous and Western elements. Printing by means of the xylographic method, which uses woodblocks, is of Chinese origin but was one of the first art forms popularized by the West in the country. The first books impressed and printed in this method were Doctrina christiana en lengua española y tagala (Christian Doctrine in the Spanish and Tagalog Languages), the Doctrina christiana en letra y lengua china (The Christian Doctrine in the Chinese Script and Language), and the Apologia por la verdadera religion (In Defense of the True Religion)—all of which were published by the Dominicans in 1593. Beginning from the 18th century, copper printing was widely used for illustrating books, such as novenas and the lives of saints. 

A number of Filipino engravers were recognized for their talent, among them Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay and Francisco Suarez, who proudly identified themselves as “Indio tagalo” when signing their works. The art of engraving was also put to use in cartography or map making, as in the map commissioned by Fr. Murillo Velarde in 1734, whose borders the artists ornamented with genre scenes, possibly the first secular images in colonial art. The folk penchant for decoration with local motifs asserted itself in the various arts, including painting, sculpture, and architecture. 

The churches built all over the country exhibit the blend of Philippine folk and European classical or baroque. For instance, the relief stone carvings on the facade of the Miag-ao Church in Iloilo, such as the figure of San Cristobal carrying Christ under a coconut tree, combine a lively folk motif with curving balustrade motifs and ornate medallions of baroque. The same decorative spirit is found in the church retablos or altar pieces usually with niches for images, ornamented with gilded salomonic columns topped by broken pediments. The relieves (reliefs) of the saints and religious scenes and icons or paintings on wood have curlicues in floral motifs for their borders. The same is true for silver ornaments, for altars in the ornate plateresque style of the silversmiths, as well as for carrozas (floats) which carried the images of saints in procession. East and West converged as well in santos or holy statues enshrined in church retablos or displayed on private altars. The formal santos for churches crafted under the strict supervision of ecclesiastical authorities followed European aesthetic canons. The statues carved in the classical style followed prescribed proportions for the figure and conveyed the values of restraint and measure, while those showing baroque influence had an emotional, expressionistic character. On the other hand, informal or folk santos drew from the indigenous sculpture styles typified by the angular and squat anitos with round, bulging eyes. 

Church supervision of religious art existed precisely to prevent the entry of unorthodox elements. Yet it is clear in representations, e.g., of the Holy Trinity depicted as human figures seated together in a row and not according to the prescribed imagery—that local artisans still managed to do things their way. Throughout the centuries of religious art, folk creative imagination insisted on asserting itself. Around the many fiestas, a multitude of folk arts developed with exuberant forms and colors. Among these were the parol (Christmas lantern), the palaspas (Lenten palm), the taka (papier maché animals), the tinapay ni San Nicolas (San Nicolas biscuit), the wrappers for pastillas (candy made from carabao milk), and brightly colored native delicacies. These arts continue to the present especially in regional centers, such as Paete which produces wood carving and the taka—brightly colored papier maché figures usually depicting country maidens, chickens, carabaos, and horses with saddles and caparisons painted in floral designs. 

In Angono, another lakeshore town, the harvest festival brings out papier mache giants and carabaos in a parade. In the Quezon towns of Lucban and Sariaya, the Maytime fiesta of San Isidro Labrador decks the houses in kiping, colorful leaf shapes made of rice flour formed into chandeliers and floral arrangements. The kiping covers all available space, together with the harvest of fruits and grain, handicrafts, and other products of the town. The art of lantern making has culminated at present in the huge Christmas lanterns of San Fernando, Pampanga, which are virtual kaleidoscopes of color and movement synchronized to music. Wood carving as folk art is also practiced in the Laguna towns of Paete and Pakil, as well as in Betis, Pampanga. Paete wood-carvers have perfected the art of carving santos from native hardwoods. After the initial coating of glue and gesso (plaster of paris) to create a nonporous ground, the encarnador (finisher) gives the image a rosy lifelike hue or an ivory finish. A neighboring town, Pakil, is known for its fans and toothpick trees of exquisite wood filigree, while the Betis woodcarvers of Pampanga apply their skills to furniture. In the Visayas, another center of folk art related to church fiestas is Kalibo in Aklan where the Santo Niño is honored with the ati-atihan in January. 

The participants don the most spectacular costumes and headdresses in a combination of feathers, beads, and boar’s teeth as in primitive art, while their bodies are blackened with soot. In the towns of Marinduque, the Moriones festival dramatizes the story of Longinus and is characterized by wooden masks in strong colors to resemble Roman centurions with their towering headdresses. With the opening of the country to international trade in the mid-19th century, economic change came with cash-crop agriculture. Foreign merchant houses established themselves in Manila and stimulated the cash economy. The new situation enriched the merchants, moneylenders, and the landlords—mostly Chinese mestizos or half-breeds—who converted their lands from their traditional produce to the new export crops, like sugar, coffee, abaca, hemp, and copra. The quota system was introduced, thereby applying greater pressure on the peasant farmers. The surplus from the cash crops which accrued to the landlords soon gave rise to the ilustrado, which literally means “enlightened” or educated class, whose members became the new patrons of the arts. It was the ilustrados who gained access to higher education in local universities and, with the opening of the Suez Canal, in foreign shores. Their contact with European culture developed new tastes geared to Western aesthetics and created a class of connoisseurs for Western art forms. The cash-crop agriculture of the mid-19th century led to a boom in the building of the bahay na bato, the mansion of stone and wood which combined indigenous features with classical and baroque elements. For their handsomely furnished interiors, the ilustrados commissioned portraits celebrating their social ascendance. Artists, such as Juan Arceo, Simon Flores, Antonio Malantic, Justiniano Asuncion, and Severino Flavier Pablo, were in great demand to do ilustrado portraits. They worked in a style, called miniaturismo, derived from the miniaturist’s art which pays meticulous attention to the embroidery and textures of costumes, to fashion accessories and jewelry, and to domestic furnishings. These images reflect a dynamic stage in the development of the Filipino identity. 

Along with portraiture, the first genre paintings appeared. Extant examples include Simon Flores’ Primeras letras (First Letters), which brought out the primary role of mothers in child education, and Alimentando pollos (Feeding Chickens) which showed a mother and her child feeding chickens. Also reflective of the spirit of the mid-19th century were the letras y figuras (letters and figures) commissioned by the new entrepreneurs. Done by masters like Jose Lozano, the letters of the patron’s name were formed by small genre figures set against scenes of Intramuros, the Pasig environs, and Manila Bay with the many ships carrying foreign flags painted in painstaking detail. In the same period which saw the secularization of painting, Damian Domingo opened his Tondo studio as the first art school, the Academia de Dibujo y Pintura. He was well known for his watercolor albums of tipos del pais, inhabitants of the archipelago representing the entire range of the social hierarchy dressed in the typical costumes of their occupation and social class. These paintings, done in the artist’s personal style of figuration, answered the demand of foreign visitors for local color. After Domingo’s death, the school was reopened under the supervision of the Junta de Comercio which brought over Spanish art professors from the peninsula. It was through them that the European classical tradition was introduced into the country. 

Furthermore, the school imported oil paintings and sculptures from Europe to serve as models for local students. Among the pupils of the second Academia was Lorenzo Guerrero who later became a teaching assistant. Guerrero furthered landscape and genre painting in the country with such works now known as The Water Carrier and Bride Before a Mirror. Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo had brief stints at the Academia. Luna did portraits of his mother and brother Manuel in a character study, El violinista (The Violinist). Hidalgo produced tranquil landscapes and delicate portraits. The two artists later chose to pursue their art in Europe. The Madrid exposition of 1884 was a significant event for Filipino expatriate artists and for the Filipino Reformists in Spain. Luna won a gold medal for his large-scale academic painting Spoliarium, while Hidalgo garnered a silver medal for Las Virgenes Cristianas expuestas al populacho (Christian Virgins Exposed to the Populace). At the banquet honoring Luna and Hidalgo, Jose Rizal extolled the two artists for proving that Filipinos could hold their own in the world of art, thus winning one more point in the Reformists’ campaign for political equality. The subject of Luna’s Spoliarium can be interpreted as an allegory of imperial Rome corresponding to imperial Spain, with the image of the Romans dragging the dead gladiators symbolizing the colonial oppression of indigenous populations. 

The spoliarium was the basement hall of the Roman Colosseum where the dead and dying gladiators were dragged after the bloody games and despoiled of their last worldly effects. The other work, Hidalgo’s Virgenes, showed a group of captive Christian maidens persecuted and offered as slaves to leering men. Both paintings conformed to the requirements of the European Academy: they were of large dimensions; they derived their subject matter from classical antiquity; i.e., imperial Rome; they brought out the drama of the moment; and their styles were characterized by modelling of forms and chiaroscuro. However, as Luna himself wrote, he belonged to the dissident salon with his bolder and more spontaneous style, while Hidalgo maintained a conservative and restrained approach to art. Another famous painting of Luna is El pacto de sangre (The Blood Compact), depicting the treaty of friendship between Sikatuna and Legazpi. Aside from their large academic paintings, Luna and Hidalgo did many smaller and more intimate works, some portraits, genres, and landscapes. A number of Luna’s works showed the spontaneity and spur-of-the-moment quality of oil sketches such as El borracho (The Drunkard) or Una franchuta (A French Woman), while most of Hidalgo’s works were tranquil, intimate pieces or nature paintings filled with romantic reverie. 

Exceptions to these were two political paintings by Hidalgo, El asesinato (The Assasination) and Per pacem et libertatem (Through Peace and Liberty). The first work, said to have been commissioned by a mason, draws its subject from the 1719 assassination of Governor General Fernando Bustamante y Bustillo by a group of disgruntled friars and their cohorts. This historical event was the bloody climax of the growing hostility between the Church and the State, both protective of their interests. The second work, done at the turn of the century, advocated the ilustrado position of capitulation to American colonial rule in its image of a woman representing Madre Filipinas (Mother Philippines), offering an olive branch to a Joan of Arc-like figure with the Stars and Stripes.