Provenance: Parian Workshops in Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

Augustine Aurelius, the son of a Christian mother and a pagan father, was born in Algeria and always considered himself as an African. He developed a strong interest in rhetoric and philosophy and in his late teens went to study in Carthage, where he lived a hedonistic lifestyle and began a long-term affair with a woman who bore him a son. He began to teach rhetoric when he reached his majority and, by the age of 30, was one of the premier academicians in the Latin world. By then he was teaching rhetoric at the imperial court in Milan, where he took another lover, having left the first. In Milan, at the urging of his mother, Monica, Augustine converted to Christianity and subsequently left his teaching position. He returned to his native land, where he was ordained into the priesthood. He became a well-known preacher and, just a few years after his return, he was ordained as the Bishop of Hippo, in Africa. He lived a simple monastic life with a few followers and is considered one of the greatest saints, although he was never officially canonized. In fact the Augustinian Order was not founded by him, since it was established by order of Pope Alexander IV in the 13th century, 800 years after his death. Augustine was a prolific writer and is best known for his ‘Confessions’, a personal account of his life, and ‘City of God’. He is sometimes called “the Father of Roman Catholicism” for his contributions to Catholic doctrine: the necessity of infant baptism, the perpetual virginity of Mary, and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. He was one of those who formulated the theological idea that God exists outside of time, in eternity. Elephant tusks from India or Madagascar was a major item of trade throughout the Spanish Colonial Period. African ivory was preferred, because that from Indian elephants tended to yellow with age. Since the late 16th century, ivory was brought in by Indian traders and Manileños who opted to engage in the coastal trade with Macao and India rather than the more profitable, but riskier, Galleon Trade to Callao in Peru and Acapulco in Mexico. A roundtrip voyage to Goa in India took an average of two to three months and earned a profit of 500%. Investments in the Galleon Trade netted twice that, but it took a year for the return on investment, if the ship survived the dangers of typhoons and pirates. Chinese carvers in the Parian produced santos in quantities that were exported to Mexico, where the wills of wealthy Mexicans from the 17th century onwards are replete with ivory images described as ‘obra Filipina’. Many were re-exported to Spain and even to France, as evidenced by a large 17th century crucifix in the treasury of Notre Dame in Paris. By the 19th century, descendants of the original Chinese carvers in the Parian, who had become mestizos de Sangley or Chinoys, had transferred their workshops to the pueblos of Sta. Cruz and Quiapo, where many santeros could be found until the end of this century. This finely carved ivory head of a male saint was certainly made in Manila for a statue that stood 90 cm. tall. It has some Chinese features, and the hair and long beard is finely carved to show the individual strands, a sure sign of antiquity. The head has glass eyes with the iris and cornea painted in reverse. The head was most probably attached to a wooden sculpted body that stood in a niche of aretablo, or had a mannequin body that was dressed in vestments for a procession on its feast day. -Martin I. Tinio, Jr.