SPOLIARIUM

The Spoliarium (often misspelled Spolarium) is a painting by Filipino

Filipino people

The Filipino people are an ethnic group primarily located in the Philippines. There are about 92 million Filipinos in the Philippines. and about 11 million living outside the Philippines....

 artist Juan Luna

Juan Luna

Juan Luna y Novicio was an Ilocano Filipino painter, sculptor and a political activist of the Philippine Revolution during the late 19th century...

. The painting was submitted by Luna to the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1884, where it garnered a gold medal. In 1886, it was sold to the Diputación Provincial de Barcelona for 20,000 pesetas

Spanish peseta

The peseta was the currency of Spain between 1869 and 2002. Along with the French franc, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra...

. It currently hangs in the main gallery at the ground floor of the National Museum of the Philippines

National Museum of the Philippines

The Museum of the Filipino People is a department of the National Museum of the Philippines that houses the Anthropology and Archaeology Divisions of the National Museum. It is located in the Agrifina Circle, Rizal Park, Manila adjacent to the main National Museum building...

, and is the first work of art that greets visitors upon entry into the museum.

Aesthetics

The spolarium measures four meters in height and seven meters in width. The canvas depicts a chamber beneath a Roman

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean...

 arena, where bodies of dead gladiators are being dragged into a shadowy area, presumably to be piled for disposal.

Spoliarium was painted on a very large canvas and is more or less life size. It depicts defeated gladiators in the arena being dragged into a pile of other corpses. On the left side, there are spectators viewing the spectacle with a variety of expressions, while on the far right side of the painting is a grieving woman in torn and shabby clothing. Horizontal lines are seen in the walls and the people watching the scene. But diagonal lines that denote movement are very obvious and can be seen in the gladiators’ slain bodies, in the men dragging them and in the floor tiles. There is dominant use of contour lines as shown in the muscles of the arms, legs and backs of the gladiators. In the use of color, there is a governing use of red, mostly seen in the center, that is one of the first things to attract the attention of the viewer. The use of blue on the weeping lady's dress creates contrast against the gladiators’ red dresses. The intensity of the color red is very overwhelming. Almost all of the colors used are warm colors, which is thought to be intentional on the part of the artist. Luna has been known to use colors not simply for reasons of aesthetics but also for their symbolic value.

The Spoliarium shows the Spanish government's mistreatment of the Philippines. The dead bodies of the gladiators represent the Spanish killings of Filipino revolutionaries.

Ryan Cayabyab

Ryan Cayabyab

Ryan Cayabyab is a Filipino musician and was the Executive and Artistic Director of the defunct San Miguel Foundation for the Performing Arts...

 composed the opera Spoliarium, which chronicles the creation of the eponymous painting and Juan Luna's trial for the murder of his wife. Soprano Fides Cuyugan-Asensio wrote the libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio and cantata, musical, and ballet. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata.Libretto , from Italian, is...

. A recorded version was released for commercial distribution in 2006.http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Spoliarium