Decision making, materiality and digitisation: Esteban Villanueva’s Basi Revolt Paintings of Ilocos

Abstract

Esteban Villanueva’s fourteen 1821 paintings, the Basi Revolt Paintings of Ilocos, are valued for their representation of the conflict between the Spanish colonial administration and Filipino Ilocano insurgents. As pictorial documents representing the emergence of secular artistic practice in the Philippines, they possess significant social and historical narratives of national independence and the Ilocano’s strength of character. Damage, previous restorations and the effects of tropical climates have not been kind to the Basi Revolt paintings and their visual reading is complex. This paper reports on the technical and materials analysis of the paintings, documentation, digitisation and image analysis as a conservation model to broaden perspectives on knowledge acquisition in conservation. Conservation decision making in the Philippines is an additional focus of the paper, with an examination of localised values, and the trajectory and life of the paintings to inform conservation actions and creative processes.

Keywords:

• Philippines
• painting practice
• digitisation
• decision making
• conservation in tropical climates
• authenticity

Acknowledgements

Provincial Government of Ilocos Sur; National Museum of the Philippines; National Institute of Physics, University of the Philippines; Supported by The Endeavour Executive Award. This programme is administered under the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, Supported by the Australian Government.

Author Biographies

Dr Nicole Tse is part of the teaching and research team at the Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation, The University of Melbourne. With an interest in cultural materials conservation in tropical climates, she was a Research Fellow with the National Museum of the Philippines and was based there as an Australia Endeavour Executive Awardee in 2014.

Professor Maricor Soriano is a Professor of physics at the National Institute of Physics at the University of the Philippines. With scientific papers in the area of optics, electronic imaging and pattern recognition, she has a long-standing interests in materials conservation with a collaboration with the Vargas Museum Art Collection at the University of the Philippines and the National Museum of the Philippines.

Dr Ana Labrador is a social anthropologist and Assistant Director of the National Museum of the Philippines, managing its interdisciplinary research and collections. She is also its chief curator. In 2008, she was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation, continuing her work on traditional knowledge and preventative conservation from the University of the Philippines at Diliman where she was Associate Professor of Art and Museum Studies.

Roberto Alfonso Balarbar is the Section Head of the Chemistry and Conservation Laboratory and the Arts Division of the National Museum of the Philippines. He has been a Museum Researcher/Conservator-Analyst/Lecturer/consultant at the Chemistry and Painting Conservation Laboratories of the National Museum for 29 years and is involved in the recent disaster recovery programmes on the island of Bohol in the Philippines.

ORCID

Nicole Tse http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5009-9817

Notes

1 The use of excess white glue on the reverse suggest a lack of care and was identified as PVAc with FTIR (with a peak assignment of 1243 cm⁻¹ (diagnostic rounded peak) together with the carbonyl at 1738 cm⁻¹ (Figure 2).