At the tender age of five, he was the lone witness to a horrifying double murder: out of jealousy, his father shot dead his beloved mother and grandmother in their home in Paris.

He was the only son of the most celebrated Filipino painter in Europe-Juan Luna y Novicio. His uncle, General Antonio Luna, Commander of the Philippine Revolutionary Army, taught him how to handle a sword. A maternal uncle, Dr. Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera, was a brilliant scientist and scholar, scion of a wealthy mestizo family from Manila who held prestigious positions in the American colonial government.

There was probably never a moment of peace in his beshrewed life. When he arrived in Manila after that double murder, the city was in the throes of an anti-colonial revolution against Spain, followed by the Spanish-American War that segued into the Philippine-American War and the inauguration of the First Philippine Republic. When the First World War was raging in Europe, he was in Paris, studying architecture. Back in the Manila, when he was on the crest of a successful career, the Second World War engulfed the country and he suffered the same horrible fate that befell his compatriots.

Despite his personal tragedies, the wars and conflicts, he created architectural masterpieces which were objects of pride and awe.

Sadly, most of those architectural treasures now exist only in faded photographs and dissolving memories.

This silent genius of a man deserves to be remembered.

He is Andres Luna de San Pedro.

Published in 2021 by Baybayin Publishing

222 pages / Paperback