Miss Philippines, Mr. Zobel, The Countess, and Luna's Silver Belt

What is art without truth—and truth may be found in the tantalizing little details. Three wonderfully truthful artists collide at the forthcoming Leon Gallery Spectacular Mid-Year Auction this June 7.

- LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL

What is art without truth—and truth may be found in the tantalizing little details. Three wonderfully truthful artists collide at the forthcoming Leon Gallery Spectacular Mid-Year Auction this June 7. This major sale usually beats to the drum of the patriotic fervor of Independence Day. However, it's not a history that's dry as dust. The expert at making the past come alive is none other than that former chair of the National Historical Commission, the tireless Ambeth Ocampo.

Ocampo, in fact, has been coaxed into parting with a few of the objects from what he calls his "cabinet of curiosities" and to include them in the June auction. (Note to self: Curiosities are not to be scoffed at. The British Museum came to be from one such cabinet, that of the eminent Dr. Sloane.)

Certainly, a sight to behold from Ambeth's collection is an intriguing double portrait—two muses, one real and one sculpted in stone. It was created by Romulo Galicano (b. 1945), a native son of Cebu who could just as easily have been born in Paris or Madrid a century ago and painted for their salons. Galicano here captures the bust of a beauty's head made by Guillermo Tolentino. In true Ambeth Ocampo-style, a newspaper article exists in his files showing the national artist photographed posing in an artist's smock, chisel in hand, working on the very same statue in the Philippines Free Press magazine of 1929. The woman in question was in fact quite famous: she was the Carnival Queen of 1927, Miss Luisa Marasigan.