Provenance: Don Pedro Alejandro Paterno (1857– 1911) and Doña Luisa Piñeyro de Lugo y Merino (Sra. de Paterno, d. 1897)

ABOUT THE WORK

be the famous era bookended of great artistic production by Luna’s “The Death of Cleopatra” in 1881 and then his ‘Spoliarium” and Hidalgo’s own “Christian Virgins Exposed to the Populace” in 1884. Luna, Hidalgo and Benlliure would all receive acclaim at the Madrid Exposition of 1884; Luna taking the highest honors, the other two bringing in silver medals. Paterno would host a lavish ‘brindis’ or dinner party to toast their triumphs; he had become one of the most well-known and certainly most influential Filipinos in Spanish social and cultural circles. He would next evolve into a historian and anthropologist — and his endeavors would take on a more measured political tone. Paterno would be the unseen force behind the Exposition of 1887, and the ensuing other international exhibitions in 1892 and 1893, giving him entry to become the first Filipino director of the Museo - Bilbloteca de Filipinas, the precursor of the present National Museum of the Philippines. The guns of 1896 and 1897, however, were still much ahead in this young poet’s future.