A rediscovered Juan Luna painting was sold for P46.8 million—roughly four to five times its earlier estimated worth—at an auction on Saturday in Makati City.
In a Facebook post, Salcedo Auctions confirmed that Luna’s 1885 creation “¿A Do…Va la Nave?” (oil on canvas, 55 cm x 104 cm) was auctioned off to a private collector.
Luna painted “¿A Do…Va la Nave?” a year after he earned a gold medal for “Spoliarium” at the Madrid Exposition. The painting was earlier estimated to be worth P9-12 million.
It features six women and three men on board a boat with a gloomy sky as their backdrop.
According to Salcedo Auctions, the title of the painting borrows from an unfinished 1841 poem by 19th century Spanish Romantic poet Jose de Espronceda :
“Y alla va la nave;
Quien sabe do va?
[And there goes the ship;
Who knows where it will go?]
Salcedo Auctions acquired the painting through Argentinian owner Maria Alberta Esther Susana Pignocchi-Bonaldi’s granddaughter. Bonaldi’s husband Jose Domingo Bonaldi had received it as a gift from business associate Goar Mestre, a media tycoon who fled his home country of Cuba upon the triumph of Fidel Castro and the Communist Revolution. However, it is unclear how Mestre got hold of the painting.
— Trisha Macas/BM, GMA News
Source: GMA News Online
