The majestic ten meter long mural by Paula Rego, Crivelli’s garden (1990-91), was shown at the National Gallery in London yesterday to great fanfare with fans of the late Portuguese artist gulping down the dramatic work filled with famous female figures and National Gallery staff (participants lucky people were invited by Rego to sit down for work, including Erika Langmuir and Ailsa Bhattacharya who worked in the education department in the early 1990s). Rego’s expansive painting originally hung in the gallery’s dining room where there was ‘awful lighting’, said curator Colin Wiggins who saw with his own eyes how Rego conceived and created the work there. is more than 30 years old in the workshop hidden in the basement of the gallery.
The piece was inspired by Carlo Crivelli La Madonna della Rondine (The Madonna of the Swallow, after 1490). Rego took an idea and “flipped it”, joked Wiggins, saying “it didn’t go into a picture, it came out of it”. Its unconventional portrayals of the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Judith and Delilah — “a bit murderous,” Wiggins says — have also made waves. Rego’s artistic innovations are only now being fully recognized, with Wiggins imploring members of the press to write in their respective articles that Crivelli’s garden, on display until October 29, should remain on permanent display (duly noted Colin – and we add that correspondence on this subject should be addressed to the director of the National Gallery, Gabriele Finaldi). Rego followers, write….
