Laureano Atlas (1743 - 1773)
Nuestra Señora Del Santisimo Rosarioen la Yglesia de Santo Domingo
signed and dated 1759 (lower right)
copper engraving on finely–combed cottonBinondo, Manila
30 1/4" x 20 1/2" (77 cm x 52 cm)

PROPERTY FROM THE DON BENITO J. LEGARDA JR. COLLECTION



LITERATURE:Sta. Maria, Felice Prudente, ed. Discovering Philippine Artin Spain. Department of Foreign Affairs and the NationalCentennial Committee on International Relations. Manila.1998. Black-and-white illustration on page 208.

who in 2014 introduced Villegas to Santo Domingo Church Prior Giuseppe Pietro Arsciwals OP to evaluate the jewelry collection of “La Naval de Manila.” Postwar, writer Nick Joaquin wrote many paeans to “La Naval de Manila” and its prewar magnificence. In the early 1970s, a near–theft of her everyday brass crown prompted heightened security measures at the Santo Domingo church. However, by that time, her gold crowns and precious jewelry had long been hidden away and promptly replaced with accessories of brass and paste. (Indeed, for many years from the postwar to the 1970s, the precious possessions of “La Gran Senora” were secreted away from the Santo Domingo church in an undisclosed location.) That time was also marked by the successive robberies of church images and antiques, so the centuries–old image was transferred to a safe vault–altar at the Gospel transept. The last three decades of the 20th century saw a steady stream of transitions in the life of the Dominican community at the Santo Domingo church. Contemporary issues of social justice, liberation theology, the relevance of the Catholic faith, pressing finances, as well as difficult questions of Dominican unity (between the Spanish and emergent Filipino provinces) and other complications were always addressed according to the strict tenets laid down by their Spanish founder Santo Domingo de Guzman (Saint Dominic Guzman) in the early 1200s. The wide–ranging resonance and constant relevance of the “La Naval de Manila” message is rooted in the assurance of “constant heavenly assistance against all odds,” reprising what happened during the sea battles of 1646, when the underdog Spaniards and “indios” won over the superior Dutch. It is the message that has continually kept generations of Roman Catholic Manilenos and Filipinos coming to the sanctuary of “Nuestra Senora del Santisimo Rosario”/Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary at the Santo Domingo church in Quezon city. In the decades that followed, a resurgence of the devotion to “Nuestra Senora del Santisimo Rosario”/”La Gran Senora”/Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary by the Catholic youth has strengthened the centuries–old traditions of their forefathers. The grand traditions of “La Naval de Manila” continue to the present day and to the future.