Spoliarium (Informative Essay)

Name: Spoliarium

Artist: Juan Luna

Date: 1884

Medium: Oil on poplar

Dimension: 400 x 700 cm.

Provenance: National Museum of the Philippines

    When writing a critic on an artwork, you should know the basics on criticism: know the semiotics, the iconography and it’s form, the social, cultural, and historical background of the painting.


    The painting depicts a dramatic historical scene where dead bodies scatter around the colosseum’s morgue. In it’s active years, the colosseum was used for gladiator battles, and executions. 


     The painting was done on poplar panel, a panel of wood commonly used by artists. Oil is a medium that is hard to work with because of it’s thickness, and it requires the use of a linseed for it to be able to blend the colors. Oil, too, is a popular medium used by artists because it’s easier to mix colors, and does not dry easily. Juan Luna used strong and dark hues of reds and browns to show darkness and despair, which is the theme of the painting, since it depicts a Roman morgue filled with dead bodies.


     Juan Luna showed a dramatic scene as a focal point - a Roman gladiator dragging a dead body. This scene actually reminded me of the painting The Raft Of Meduse by Theodore Gericault. The scene in Juan Luna’s painting is very iconic of Theodore’s painting of the dead bodies in his Raft of Meduse. On the extreme right of the painting, we can see a woman wearing a very dark-colored teal dress showing her shoulders with her back facing the viewer. It is rather odd that this woman’s color scheme is different than those of the spectators and the gladiators. From her position, we can assume that the woman is weeping. On the left part of the painting are spectators from the arena. The human subjects are perfectly rendered, and sharp. The lighting used is exquisite, and it really gave that very dramatic feeling.


     This painting would fall under the style of realism because it depicts a rather social reality than beauty; and Neoclassical because it is made in the 1800s, and it shows the perfect anatomical perspective that the Greco-Roman artists taught us.


     The painting won the first gold medal in the National Exposition of Fine arts in Madrid in 1884. This honor showed Spaniards that Filipinos were not uncivilized people, thus encouraging Filipinos in Spain (J. Rizal, and M. Del Pilar among them) in their fight for reforms.

My Family

My husband, Bobby, in his office as a Mechanical Engineer in Saudi Arabia.

My Tres Marias with Jollibee. Lysa, Fiona, Angela

Charles, with Angela, during his first day as an acolyte.

My panganay and bunso. Erick and Lysa.

My ever supportive mother, Trel and loving brother, Aldrin.

Beggars on the Streets (Narrative Essay)

I see them on streets most of the time. They’re lucky if someone gives them a pennyor two with which they could buy something to eat – No, just to fill their stomachs. Because to eat is when you enjoy what you’re really consuming and getting nourishment from it. That they don’t really experience as they chew on things that you could barely consider food. A pack of 5-peso chips to feed 5 dying children of hunger isn’t really eating, right?

And if nobody gives them alms, they have free meals. Like stray dogs, they pick on the garbage and search for something still edible. Of course they couldn’t get enough nutrition from that, so they’re always lethargic, almost half dead on the roads. And in their filthy, shabby form, they sleep on sidewalk, ignoring the danger of the city road plus the unfriendly changes of weather.

So I guess I’m really not in the place to say that life sucks when these people in our society still exist. With all these stresses that I am dealing with, I should still consider myself lucky to have been able to live life to a form that I may still be considered human. The burdens of my everyday life, as compared to theirs, are nothing but a sphere of bubble. Theirs is far too great. The world is really on their shoulders. Their lives are living hell on earth. While I have access to everywhere I may wish to go to, they don’t. They are mainstays of the fierce road and they won’t and they can’t go somewhere else but there. Their home is also their cages.

I couldn’t help but admit how foolish I am to just take for granted some things that for me seemed just an apple on my hand, while for others, a coconut on that very tall tree. Seeing life through this perspective, I can’t be thankful enough that through all this daily struggling with life, some people have it way worse – like these beggars. I pray that as I may change the way I view about life, the world would also change the way they treat others who are less fortunate. May we all realize that it takes more than a couple of coins to change lives. I wish we’d all have fair access to everything in life a normal human has. That instead of fearing them, we might give them smiles instead and offer a hand to help them out. Beggars or not, we’re all humans by the way.

My View on Cosmetic Surgery (Persuasive Essay)

As defined by medical books, Medicine per se is science and art of healing humans. It includes a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. Therefore, if it deviates far from what really is its exact definition, it is not medicine anymore. What I’m talking about here is the use of modern technology in blend of medicine to create that new branch called “Cosmetic Surgery”.

It is true that when you tackle about restoring health, it doesn’t only scope the physical but also the mental and social attributes of a human being. But altering the natural looks only to feed one’s ego is taking it the wrong way. it doesn’t make a man/woman “healthier” when you alter what is naturally his/her. We should erase the thinking of being someone else because that is what kills the real health of loving what God has really given us. This might be one of the reasons countless songwriters ever thought of inventing lyrics of their songs that “you are amazing just the way you are.” Such transformation is ethically against human dignity. We are using God’s gift of technology against its real means.

I believe in the saying that a monkey, even when covered with gold, is still a monkey and you can never ever make a horse out of it. So why transform it into something it naturally is not?

I get to think that somehow such technology is just a scam. They start making people feel ugly about themselves so they would get people fall into their false beliefs that true beauty is when you wow faces with your eye-catching physical features, which would make them feel good about themselves, but paradoxically they are only damaging it. The worse impact it brings, as per the article, is that social discrimination it would create between the naturals and the enhanced, promoting the mentality of marginalization of those deemed “imperfect”.

By this we are not creating beautiful creatures, but rather, ugly and horrible ones. To really enhance one is not a process that could take just a night of peelings, injections or surgery but by personal efforts to build strong relationship with others in the long run, so we would always feel good about ourselves no matter how the society defines what real beauty is.

Everything in this earth, including the bold and the beautiful, would perish in time anyway so let’s not live up to focus on how earth defines beauty. Let’s just live life and enjoy being naturally what we are.

Marriage: A Lifetime Commitment or Just a Fling? (Persuasive Essay)

"Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." -- Mark 10:9.

Nowadays, it is true that the sanctity of marriage is being taken for granted. They’re making marriage an event equals to a birthday party that you could celebrate every year, but that’s a mentality far wrong than adding 1 plus 1 and getting a sum of 4. And to make things worse, to annul a marriage is like buying a piece of candy from a sari-sari store.

From Hollywood celebrities to just the local ones, ending a marriage is becoming a hot trend. One modern example that the article provides is just the recent Kris Aquino and James Yap’s marriage annulment. It’s as if their marriage was just some agreement that they had on paper that they could easily turn down just because they felt things between them couldn’t really be worked out anymore.  Years from now, I wouldn’t wonder if baby James will turn out to be one delinquent individual – and all to blame is one decision his parents have made – by choosing to end their relationship.

Marriage is a lifelong commitment of two souls who vowed to be together, forever. It is more than just putting a ring on your lover’s finger. It is more than just a word of mouth. It is more than a signature printed on a piece of paper. It is, rather, a covenant made in front of God, in his holy altar with no exchange, no return, no retreat and no surrender. It’s a promise to always be there for each other for life, sa hirap at ginhawa.

I would never forget my nanay’s words of wisdom for me about this. That marriage is not like a spoonful of hot rice that you take in your mouth, and then you spit out after you get burnt. And I know God is on my side as He says:

“I hate divorce." -- Malachi 2:16.