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El Gobernador y el Obispo

Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo

1896

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 Governor 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, Vírgenes Christianas Expuestas al Populacho, won a silver medal at the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain, in 1884- the same competition in which Luna attained a gold medal for Spoliarium.


This painting was 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, a 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 well lit 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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