Juan Luna and the Pious Filipina: Dress and Catholic Ideologies in Juan Luna’s Portraiture

Filipino-born painter Juan Luna (1857–1899) was educated at the Academia de Dibujo y Pintura in Manila, before travelling to Spain in 1877. In Europe he won many awards for his work, including Spolarium in 1884, a large painting of gladiators currently displayed prominently in the National Museum of Fine Art, Manila. He returned to the Philippines in 1894, creating numerous portraits of Filipino women which ubiquitously feature variations of early ‘national dress’. This article addresses the frequent inclusion of traditional Filipina attire or Filipiniana, referred to in their early form as Baro’t saya and later known as ‘Maria Clara’ and Traje de Mestiza gowns, in the work of Luna in the prelude to the Philippine Revolution. In particular, this shows how Catholic ideologies influenced what came to be seen as the precursors to the national dress of the Philippines. Catholic ideals, promoted by Spanish colonizers since the sixteenth century, manifested in the clothing depicted in Luna’s iconic images and shaped the roots of the sartorial politics in the Philippines which would evolve throughout the twentieth century and beyond. The modern manifestation of Philippine dress or terno has continued to be linked with national pride, identity and feminist debate due to its inability to disassociate from its origins as both a Philippine and Western garment. This article considers how Catholic ideals became woven into the iconography of Filipiniana and were represented in late nineteenth-century portraiture.