Our national treasures (5)

Being an auditor, my concern is being able to answer the common tao’s questions. How much did the government spend for the acquisition of antiques, ivory “santos” and other religious relics, porcelain of the Ming and Sung dynasties, and other works of art?

In my book, Write It Right for Auditors and Accountants, Copy@2011, By Art V. Besana, First Edition, 2011 ISBN 978-971-95116-0-1, printed by Cacho Hermanos Inc., I mentioned how I managed to audit these items.

The Commission on Audit (CoA) is a signatory to the requirements of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions that government wealth like works of art when acquired should be reported in accordance with the International Public Sector Accounting and Reporting Standards.

Each work of art should be properly accounted for, and included in the official annual inventory of every government agency, each with account name and number, annotation as to date of acquisition, estimated price, from whom acquired, significance, if any, etc.

CoA state auditors are great lovers of works of art. As auditors of the world, they are socially oriented on paintings by artists known around the world.

There is no single office of an auditor in the Philippines where no painting by either Filipino or foreign artist is displayed.

Laya, who is best known for spearheading the antique and art collection when he was head of the Intramuros Administration and Governor of the Central Bank, sometimes conferred with the CoA chairman on how he would deal with a rare case where owners of paintings worth millions, mainly senior citizens, did not want to receive a check as payment but cash. At that time the highest peso denomination was 100; there was no 1,000-peso bill yet.

The solution was for Jaime Laya to bring along an armored car with a security guard, a team of auditors and accountants to serve as witnesses and altogether go to the house to buy the paintings.

How much would all the works of art by Filipino artists add to the wealth of the nation? Perhaps having a glimpse into the works of two of our country’s greatest artists — Fernando Amorsolo and Juan Luna — can give us an idea.

“The fire trees are in bloom, baskets brimming with the season’s first mangoes, watermelons aplenty in the bustling tiangge, fa rm folk (with little girl snuggling under a big hat) ferrying produce across the river, women washing and children splashing in a sun-dappled stream.”

“To gaze at an Amorsolo painting is to escape from the noisy, ugly and smelly present, to be back on a sunny day in May more than a century ago, when a UP professor was lightheartedly flirting with a shy and pretty ‘dalaga,’ children shrieking and splashing off the summer heat in a nearby brook, at a time when baskets brimmed with the season’s first mangoes and when fire trees were in bloom.”

These are the 1st and 27th or last paragraph of Laya’s “Forever May,” written in response to the Amorsolo family’s request for a feature story for submission to Panorama Magazine as part of the National Artist’s centenary in 1992.

Fernando Amorsolo was born on 30 May 1892 in Paco, Manila, a portraitist and painter of rural Philippine landscapes and was nicknamed the Grand Old Man of Philippine Art.

He painted and sketched more than ten thousand pieces over his lifetime and was the first ever to be recognized as a National Artist of the Philippines, three days after his death on 24 April in 1972, at the age of 79 years.

Fernando Amorsolo’s works had been offered at auction multiple times. Since 1998 the record price for an Amorsolo at auction is $1,030,104 for “Under the Mango Tree,” sold by Leon Gallery Makati in 2024.

(To be continued)