So it was impossible for a wife or a father to be at the imagined spoliarium.
Spanish colonizers called Filipinos indios, a derogatory term that painted them as "indolent savages" who had to be tamed and ruled. When Juan Luna, with his brother Manuel, traveled to Europe to study at the mecca of the humanities, they were gawked at like exotic mammals.
Enrolling at the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando, Luna studied under painter Don Alejo Vera. Dissatisfied with traditional school, Luna opted for alternative education by apprenticing with Vera, who brought him to Rome to assist in commissioned works.
Winning a silver medal at the first art exposition in Madrid, the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Exposition of Fine Arts), Luna entered La Muerte de Cleopatra (The Death of Cleopatra, 1881), which led to an annual scholarship of 600 pesos from the Ayuntamiento of Manila.
It required him to create a painting that captured the essence of Philippine history. As a condition, it would then become the Ayuntamiento's property.
In September 1883, Luna started The Spoliarium as demanded by the contract. As a graduation piece out to prove he had turned into the consummate academic painter, Luna painted in oil (the only painting medium available during that time) on lifesize, 4.22-by-7.675-meter, on poplar, and spent an uncompromising eight months on the vigorous and dramatic painting.
In early 1884 in Barcelona, Jose Rizal proposed the writing of a novel about the Philippines to a group of Filipinos. The proposal was unanimously approved. However, the project did not push through as the people who agreed to contribute remised on the content: all turned chauvinistic by picking women as subject! Rizal pulled out of the plan and decided to draft the novel alone.
Once finished and allowed to dry, Luna signed The Spoliarium as signed "LVNA ROMA CCLXXXIV" (LUNA ROME '84), the largest painting by a Filipino artist of its epoch.
In intricate brushstrokes, it is brooding and dark even as it breathes life to a highly charged scene at the crematory after gladiators battled each other or against ferocious beasts in a panis et circensis (bread and circuses, roughly translated as entertainment) to which the Roman rulers had to accede to avoid the population's anger.
Four injured and dying gladiators who entertained their oppressors in the arena with their lives are being dragged in by Roman soldiers in the dark and dingy crematory. Cheering spectators and greedy: faces below eagerly await to strip off the fallen combatants of their armor. The barbarism sharply contrasts with the humanity of a woman sprawled on the floor as an old man with a torch locates a son.
He entered he jaw-dropping obra maestra in the Madrid Art Exposition while Felix Resurrection Hidalgo submitted Las Virgenes Cristianas Expuestas Al Populacho (1884). Luna clinched the gold medal, while Hidalgo won the silver. They proved to the world that indios could paint better than their colonizers.
An epic depiction of a dreadful scene at the morgue of the Colosseum after a gladiators' duel to death, Luna's intention in painting The Spoliarium was to win a prize in a European art exposition. When the imaginative depiction did just that, his massive masterpiece took an entirely different purpose.
Luna painted The Spoliarium 1,400 years after the last gladiatorial fights so his source of information is likely oral history, written references, visual depictions of gladiatorial scenes, and no doubt his own imagination.
Not only did then medical student Rizal give The Spoliarium (1884) an entirely different meaning not intended by the artist, but the artist himself misrepresented its gladiatorial theme.
In Latin, spoliarium means "den." As such, Luna likely used it as the title of his painting to mean den of thieves in Rome's Colosseum, which is assumed as its location might have a morgue, but definitely not a den of thieves.
The hypogeum is the two-level underground of Rome's Colosseum was referred to, is the assumed location of The Spoliarium. Problem is it did not have a part called a spoliarium. YouTube documentaries on the Colosseum do not identify a spoliarium.
He likely used the Latin word as a metaphor than to refer to a specific part of the Colosseum where it is assumed fallen gladiators were deprived of fight implements or uniform, thus the reference as a den of thieves.
Gladiators were slaves from other countries, mostly spoils of war. They were valuable properties who came from facilities where they were lived, trained and recuperate in case of non-mortal wounds. This discounted the possibility that their implements were up for grabs or even the presence of covetous spectators in the "spoliarium."
Roman soldiers were not involved in these fights. Slaves were assigned to perform non-combatant roles such as doing menial work such as bringing gladiators out of the arena. As such, killed gladiators were not incinerated but as archeology had revealed, some prized fighters were accorded proper burials as indicated by tombstones; others were dumped in common graves.
So, it was impossible for a wife or a father to be at the imagined spoliarium.
At a banquet at the Restaurant Ingles on the night of June 25, 1884, about 60 people — among them members of the Reform Movement, Spanish liberals and members of the Masonry — gathered to celebrate Luna's and Hidalgo's triumphs. Rizal subbed for Maximo Paterno as toast speaker at the last minute.
Largely speaking in poetic Spanish, Rizal originated from a position of equality with the Spanish, talking about his program, hopes, complaints for Filipinos. Its rhetoric was equality between the Filipinos and the oppressive Spanish colonizers. Rizal expounded on his diatribe: "…Upon reflecting with their palettes the splendor of the Tropical sunlight, transform it into rays of eternal glory with which they wreath their country — humanity subjected to severe tests; unredeemed humanity; reason and aspiration in open struggle against personal troubles, fanaticism and injustice, because sentiment and opinion will break open a path through even the thickest wall…"
At this event, Rizal put a broader political context to The Spoliarium in terms of the Philippine-Spanish relations, an allegory of the agony of Filipinos under Spanish colonial rule. Graciano Lopez Jaena bolstered Rizal's fragile but absorbed logic in the toast immediately after the event. That was not the point, however — to parlay their political agenda was. But first they had to say it loud and proud.
If The Spoliarium has historical importance, it is that it inspired Rizal's political direction. The painting irrevocably led him to pursue his political ideals that altered his life, dedicating it to the achievement of reforms for the homeland. He soon turned student activist and began to pen his botched anti-colonial novel, his solo authorship called Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not) and its sequel, El Filibusterismo (The Filibustering).
Despite the defective depiction of subject that proved the Filipinos' parity with any nationality and having catalyzed Dr. Rizal's political purpose that led to his martyrdom but crumbled and abolished the oppressive Spanish rule leading to the liberation of the Philippines.
The Spoliarium is indisputably the country's most important National Cultural Treasure.