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A group photo in Paris, with Paz standing second from right.
Luna would be arraigned in a Paris court a few months later, and would be absolved of criminal and civil charges. The tragedy was enough to convince the artist to leave Paris, and with his son move back to Madrid where he would tell his friends that he had lost all inspiration to carry on with his art. Meanwhile, Trinidad decided to burn all of the Luna paintings in his possession, and for years there was to be no Luna painting in any Pardo de Tavera household.
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“Inquiring into the provenance of this painting, I could not understand why it has survived to the present,” wrote Ambeth Ocampo in Looking Back, “when the Pardo de Taveras are said to have burned all their Lunas...” Indeed, there is no known record of how the portrait found its way to Manila and the homes of Manila collectors. As to where the supposed curse of Portrait of a Lady came from, that remains a mystery, too. Did Luna, in his desperation, curse the painting? Was the portrait present at Villa Dupont during the murder, and by some black magic imbued with the tragedy, which it passed on to every home it found itself in? I could go on with the questions, but I’m starting to sound ridiculous even to myself.
Close to three decades after it made its way to the National Museum, the rumor of the curse persists, as most rumors do. A source close to Vicky and the late Tony Nazareno, the couple who once owned Portrait of a Lady, says there might be no record of the curse’s origins but there might be basis to believe it.
“We never heard about the supposed curse of the painting,” our source says. “We never knew! [Vicky] especially is very superstitious, so if she had known she wouldn’t have acceded to her husband’s prodding to purchase the painting. At any rate, I do remember that it was purchased in 1981, the beginning of ‘81, and for some reason, the family closed one of its biggest stores. They had a handicraft store and the biggest was in Roxas Boulevard and that was closed… And Tony got sick inexplicably. I remember his carotid artery got swollen. It was really swollen. He was in Makati Med in and out, for months, and doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the carotid artery. And it was also the start of him having hypertension problems.”
According to the same source, the broker of the painting was Fe de Pio, wife of the famous portraitist Gig and mother of up-and-coming artist Vince, who was at the time selling two Luna paintings to the Nazarenos, the other one entitled La Bete Humaine, or The Human Beast, which was eventually purchased by the famous collector Teyet Pascual. “Tony and Vicky had already hung that in the house, but then Vicky had this eerie feeling about the painting. It’s a very dreary painting, very beautiful lady in black holding a book called La Bete Humaine. [But] they really liked [the other] painting, the woman with the exposed breast and rosary. It was beautiful.” (I spoke to Fe de Pio and she only remembers selling the La Bete Humaine to the Nazarenos, not the supposed portrait of Paz).
