By Mairene Leynes
Art Instructor, College of Arts and Sciences
On September 23, 2026, the College of Arts and Sciences, through ARTS 111: Fine Arts – Visual Arts, held Reading the Camarín, an Artist Talk on the ceiling paintings of the Camarín de la Virgen at the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Abandoned in Santa Ana, Manila. Members of the UA&P community took part in the event.
The resource speaker was Mr. James Rainz Morales, Chairperson of the Santa Ana Church Heritage Commission. He guided participants through the camarín, a chamber behind and above the main altar where the image of Our Lady of the Abandoned is kept and venerated. Its ceiling holds eleven panels depicting scenes from the lives of the Virgin Mary and of Christ. Painted in the 1720s, they are the oldest datable oil-on-wood paintings in the Philippines and have been declared a National Cultural Treasure.
The panels belong to a wider story. They were made at a time when Manila stood at a crossroads of exchange linking Asia, the Americas, and Europe, and when images, devotions, and artistic forms traveled across oceans. They are works of faith, and they reward the patient work of reason: reading them closely shows how a local community received a visual language shared across the world, reshaped it, and made it its own.
The talk traced the devotion that gave rise to the camarín, offered a reading of the panels, and turned to the work of conserving them today. Mr. Morales showed that the paintings have survived nearly three centuries because two things have worked together. One is a community of devotees that has kept the room in use and in prayer. The other is careful, skilled conservation carried on in the face of present-day pressures.
This speaks to a question that heritage practitioners around the world increasingly share: how can heritage be sustained not only as an object to be protected, but as something living, held in trust by the people for whom it still carries meaning? The camarín offers one answer. A work endures when its materials are cared for, and also when each generation learns to see it, value it, and take responsibility for it as part of the common good.
The College extends its gratitude to Mr. Morales, the Santa Ana Church Heritage Commission, and Fr. Virgilio del Mundo, OFM, Parish Priest, for entrusting this treasure to a new generation of viewers. Special thanks as well to Mr. David Neil Joseph Lumba, who served as the event’s emcee, and to Ms. Eri Kondo and Ms. Tanaya Reverie Rafanan, former ARTS 111 students who joined the panel of reactors.