Spoliarium

The Spoliarium is a painting by Filipino painter Juan Luna. He spent eight months completing the painting on canvas. The picture recreates a despoiling scene in a Roman circus where dead gladiators are stripped of weapons and garments.

Juan Luna submitted the painting to the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in Madrid in 1884, where it garnered the first gold medal (out of three). Together with other works of the Spanish Academy, the Spoliarium was on exhibit in Rome in April 1884.  

In 1886, the painting was sold to the provincial government of Barcelona for 20,000 pesetas. It remained in storage until the museum was burned and looted during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. Upon orders of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the damaged painting was sent to Madrid for restoration, where it stayed for 18 years. The calls for the painting’s transfer to Manila by Filipinos and sympathetic Spaniards in the 1950s led to General Franco’s orders to finish the restoration and donate the painting to the Philippines. The painting was turned over to the Philippine Ambassador to Spain, Manuel Nieto Sr., in January 1958 and later sent to the Philippines as a gift from the government of Spain.

Currently, the painting hangs in the Spoliarium Hall on the second floor of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Manila and is the first work of art that greets visitors entering the museum. The National Museum considers it the largest painting in the Philippines with dimensions of 4.22 meters by 7.675 meters.

Donor Profile

A beautiful replica of the Spoliarium, a renowned painting by Juan Luna, was donated to the Philippine Folklife Museum by Margarita Baxter-Lazaro, daughter of the late Doña Esperanza Baxter.

In 1980, Doña Esperanza Baxter commissioned a very talented painter, Mr. F. Espina, whom she had met at the home of Greek Ambassador Adamson, to replicate the Spoliarium. The replica, painted on canvas, measures 37 by 50 inches.

The Spoliarium is a permanent exhibit at the Museo ng Lahing Pilipino/Philippine Folklife Museum and is available for viewing on the 5th floor of the Philippine Center, 447 Sutter St., San Francisco.

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