At Pintô Art Museum, something new for Holy Week and beyond
In time for the observance of Holy Week, the Pintô Art Museum in Antipolo City recently unveiled a medieval-looking but truly Filipino retablo.
Also called reredo, a retablo is a decorative backdrop for the altar table which today consists of a multilevel, mostly wooden structure with niches for saints.
It evolved from medieval-era Europe, where painted panels were utilized as background objects for the altar.
In the Philippines, some of the best examples can be found in the churches of Magsingal in Ilocos Sur, Betis in Pampanga, Silang in Cavite, Romblon in Romblon, Santo Niño Church in Cebu City, and Guiuan in Eastern Samar, among many others.
Done by master church painter Guy Custodio, the retablo of Saint Francis of Assisi at the Pintô Art Museum is housed in the quaint, Mediterranean-style chapel dedicated to the saint.
Museum owner and aesthete Joven Cuanang said it was fitting for their environmental protection cause as St. Francis is also the patron saint of ecology.
Patron saint of ecology
“The chapel in Pintô has always been dedicated to St. Francis, patron saint of ecology, as our mission is to promote art culture and ecology,” Cuanang said.
“That is why we have an arboretum of endangered indigenous Philippine plants and trees, all part of our advocacy. The chapel provides a spiritual dimension to what we do here.”
Saint Francis is portrayed receiving the stigmata in 1224. On the left is Custodio’s interpretations of Francis’ nativity scene and Francis as the patron saint of ecology. On the right are panels on the religious song composed by the saint, “Laudes Creaturarum,” and his death in 1226.
Below these are images of important chapters in the saint’s life that led to his canonization by the Roman Catholic Church just two years after his death.
Crowning the retablo are fresco-like paintings of angels framing the stained-glass decorated oculus.
Custodio said his work is an “interpretation of paintings from manuscripts during that period.”
As a known painter and restorer of church ceiling paintings in the country, he has so far restored or executed the ceiling paintings of the churches of Bohol; Guiuan in Eastern Samar; and a section of the ceiling of the San Agustin Church in Intramuros.
