Juan Luna masterpiece sold for P46.8M at Makati auction

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