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Narrative 131

mixture of pain, self-control, and even ecstasy. Suffering is given an ecstatic
quality in many Baroque Catholic depictions of saints and, in this tradition,
it was often less about pain and more about holy suffering. This portrait of
Rizal resonates with Catholic visual piety, which the Spaniards brought to
the Philippines and is still visible among the devotional iconography in the
Church of St. Augustine, Intramuros, Manila. Botong’s image is far from the
traditional Man of Sorrows and closer to a man embracing his fate, his holy
suffering. The central figure dominates even more than the victim in Francisco
de Goya’s The Third of May 1808 (1814) or in Edouard Manet’s five versions
of the Execution of Maximilian (1867–1869). Though Francisco may well
have been influenced by such earlier depictions of execution scenes, he is
elaborating the narrative of Rizal’s death in a particular way. Unlike Goya
and Manet, Francisco shows almost all the soldiers’ faces, gazing toward
Rizal as they fire. The figure of Rizal himself is thrust forward and upward
toward the viewer, almost inviting watchers to lean forward and catch him
before he crumples to the ground. The invitation goes further. The viewer is
invited to witness the event almost like the creation of a martyr, so Botong
transforms the execution into a spiritual event, an epiphany. Rizal floats in
ecstasy. He is portrayed not as Jesus but as the leading saint of Philippine
nationalistic civil religion.
Francisco’s artistic elaboration is far more dramatic than the picture that
is commonly claimed to be the only existing photographic record of his
execution. The black and white photograph contains the diminutive and
smartly dressed figure of Rizal with his back turned away from the firing squad.
Ranks of soldiers and bystanders, out of focus, appear to observe the soldiers
as they raise their rifles to fire. Commentary on the photograph often implies
far more about the interpreter than the image itself, with one commentator
claiming that “the hero’s serenity is visible. So is his love of country and
great expectation that the nobleness of humanness would triumph” (Maria
1996: 250). More recently, the authenticity of the photograph has been
questioned, with some even suggesting it was taken from one of the early
screen versions of Rizal’s life (Deocampo 2007: 61).
The moment of Rizal’s execution has also undergone a number of cinematic
elaborations. The scene is usually placed within the wider canvas of his life
and death. Albert Yearsley’s The Life and Death of the Great Filipino Martyr,
Dr Jose Rizal (1912) and Edward Meyer Gross’s The Life of Dr Jose Rizal
(1912) released within a day of each other, competed for public attention,
attracting considerable audiences. Such early cinematic elaborations were not,
however, without their contemporary critics. In 1913, one local magazine
writer was highly critical of these American-made films: