El Gobernador y el Obispo
Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo
1896
The El Gobernador y el Obispo is an oil painting by Filipino artist Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo (1855-1913). It shows Don Gomez Perez Dasmariñas, 7th Governor and Captain-General of the Philippines, and Fray Domingo de Salazar, a Dominican Friar and 1st Bishop of Manila deliberating about the dispatch of a military expedition to the fort at Ternate in the Moluccas ( part of present-day Indonesia), which controlled the lucrative clove-trade. In 1593, while the ship the Governir manned was moored on the island of “Caca”, just off the coast of Luzon, the Chinese rowers staged a mutiny in which he was killed.
Resurreccion Hidalgo, is a contemporary of Juan Luna. His work, Virgenes Christianas Expuestas al Populacho won a silver medal at the Exposicion Nacional de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain in 1884- the same competition in which Luna attained a gold medal for Spoliarium.
This painting used to hang in the Malacañan Palace soon after Resurreccion Hidalgo completed it in 1896 during the second term as Spanish Governor-General of the Philippines, Fernando Primo de Rivera y Sobremonte, who is also the 1st Marquess of Estrella. In 1936, former advisor on the transition of the Commonwealth of the Philippines wrote in his diary that it was the Philippines President, Manuel L. Quezon’s favorite painting and had it hung prominently and lit well in Malacañan. Eventually, it was transferred to the National Museum of the Philippines where it remained.
Reference: National Museum of Fine Arts
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