Blanco’s ‘Flora de Filipinas’
As a collector of Filipiniana since the 1980s, one of the books I lusted after but never acquired due to its rarity and exorbitant price was the set of Fr. Manuel Blanco’s six oversized volumes known as “Flora de Filipinas.” These books are highly sought after, not so much for their obsolete scientific text, but for the highly decorative lithographs of Philippine flowers found in Volumes 5 and 6.
If you can find a complete set today, it might set you back, depending on the completeness and condition, from P3 million to P5 million. As a student on allowance in the 1980s, I bought the best that I could afford, meaning individual pages detached from the book, removed from already butchered sets and sold cheaply in the flea markets of Paris and Madrid, as well as the antique shops of Ermita, Manila. I had sourced two sets: one in black and white, another in color, and negotiated to buy pages at P100 each. I ignored most of the flowers and concentrated on the vegetables and fruits that had more volume on the page. My Tsinoy entrepreneurial skills got to work, and I flipped these for P1,000 each. Later, I found out my P100 plates ended up in Bea Zobel’s shop in Makati, where they were sold, framed, for P1,000 each.
Any living or dining room wall ornamented with “Flora de Filipinas” plates in gold-edged frames today is a shameless display of taste, culture, and disposable income. In such a setting, these plates do not inspire bibliographic or botanical conversation, but show the pocketbook of someone who can afford to display a 150-year-old picture of a banana. Forgive the sour grapes, but had I kept at least a dozen of the P100 plates, these would be worth a lot today. Individual plates from butchered sets of the book now go from P20,000 for the common flowers to P50,000 or more for the more desirable vegetables, fruit, or the handful of folded double plates depicting banana, coconut, and bamboo. Naturally, plates with the names of Filipino artists, who signed their work, also carry a premium. In retrospect, I now realize that the uncolored or black-and-white plates printed in Manila are more important than the colored lithographs printed in Barcelona circa 1877, though Volume 1 carries the date 1877; Volume 2, 1878; Volume 3, 1879; Volume 4, 1880; and Volumes 5 and 6 have no imprint date.
Seventeen artists have been identified from the names on individual plates. We will not bother listing all of the five Spaniards, except for Agustin Saez, the unethical director of the Academy of Drawing and Painting in Manila, who competed with his students in the contest for the frontispiece of the book. It was not a conflict of interest to him that he sat on the board of judges for the contest and was art consultant to the Real Sociedad Economica, the patron of the contest. This same Saez made Juan Luna drop out of the academy and continue further studies at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes in Madrid and its branch in Rome. Saez should be remembered as a bad man and an obscure artist. Another Spaniard who demands inclusion here is Emma Vidal, the only woman artist involved in the project.
Of the 12 Filipino artists whose names are indicated, only five are famous, or at least known to us from books and a few of their extant works. Lorenzo Guerrero of Ermita deserves special mention as the teacher of the 19th-century masters: Juan Luna and Félix Resurrección Hidalgo. The others are: Miguel Zaragoza and, by some happy (Feliz in Spanish) coincidence, the remaining three share the same first name: F(elix) Pardo (de Tavera), Felix Resurreccion (Hidalgo), and Felix Martinez. The remainder, who have to be dug up from the dustbin of Philippine art history, are: Cayetano Arguelles, Francisco Domingo, Isidro Llado, R.L. Salamanca, and the brothers: Regino, Rosendo, and Juan Garcia.
Some years ago, when Jaime Ponce de Leon of Leon Gallery sought my opinion on a consignment of the 1834 first edition of Flora de Filipinas, I dismissed them outright because it did not come with illustrations. I recommended that he source the more desirable later 1877 “grand” or “de luxe” edition with the fabulous red and gold cover that will impress in any library or living room table. Printed in Barcelona, the 1877 third edition comes with the celebrated, colored lithographs of Philippine flowers. Looking back on that conversation today, I regret dissing the largely unread text of Father Blanco’s Flora de Filipinas. Hidden beneath the dated botanical text was a lot of Philippine history. Father Blanco did not just classify and describe plants but also inquire into their medical properties. Before Mercury Drug dispensed pills and capsules, the 17th-century Augustinian and Jesuit pharmacies in Intramuros prescribed remedies from their backyard gardens. Beyond the Flora de Filipinas plates, its text (downloaded free from the Biblioteca Nacional de España) reveals a clear picture of Philippine biodiversity that can be a reference for our present and, more importantly, our future.
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