An afternoon in Crivelli's Garden:Paula Rego @ the National Gallery.

Paula Rego's version of Crivelli's Garden is big. It's ten metres wide and what with it being displayed in a fairly small room in the National Gallery that meant that I had to take five photographs to fit it all in. It's impressive though even if, like much of Rego's fantastic work, I didn't fully understand all of it.

Crivelli's Garden (1990-91)

There's a lot to take in - and I'll come to that - at least some of it. But first, some background. Who is Crivelli? Carlo Crivelli was an Italian Renaissance painter who was born in Venice in the 1430s and died about sixty years later in the Marche region of Italy. Inspired by Mantegna, he was a contemporary of Giovanni Bellini and, towards the end of his life, he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for a family chapel in a Franciscan church in the comune of Matelica.

The work he made was pretty detailed and pretty hectic (the image below only shows some of it) and included depictions of St Jerome, St Catherine of Alexandria, St George, and St Sebastian as well as the Nativity. Obviously these people and events didn't all take place at the same time and in the same place but Crivelli painted them as if they did - and placed them all in some kind of garden - Crivelli's garden.

Carlo Crivelli - La Madonna Della Rondine (The Madonna Of The Swallow) (after 1490)

Five hundred years later, the Portuguese-British artist Paula Rego (who we sadly lost last year, at the age of 87) made a very loose cover version of Crivelli's work. One that doesn't look a great deal like it but is clearly inspired by the original. Reinterpreting Christian and mythical (as if they're different things) narratives, Rego populated her work with strong women. Either from her own life or from the history of painting. With a few female saints chucked in for good measure.

There's Diana (from Ovid's Metamorphoses and from the Titian painting) who transforms Actaeon into a stag after he stumbles on her bathing, there's Mary Magdalene (sat in some kind of booth - or 'niche' and, again, deep in contemplation in a black dress), there's Erika Langmuir (the National Gallery's Head of Learning at the time) and her junior colleague Alisa Bhattacharya, there's Delilah (who, unlike in Rubens' painting, is dominating her lover Samson), and then there's Judith (who may, or may not, have just beheaded Holofernes - certainly something big and heavy and head shaped is being plopped into that bag).

There's Leda and the swan, Daphne and Apollo (both inscriptions on the Greek column at the far right of the image), there's St Martha (sweeping the floor), Catherine of Alexandria (wielding a sword after her revenge decapitation of the Roman Emperor Maxentius - she's based on Rego's friend Rudi Nassauer), there's St Cecilia (stuck in another niche), and there's the hermit St Mary of Egypt who's just hanging out with a friend, one who just happens to be a lion.

In the background we've got St Margaret (who legend has it was swallowed by a dragon that she had befriended before erupting in his stomach!) and a series of murals from the life of the Virgin Mary and in the foreground whispering to each other we can see that very same Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth. Both pregnant (with Jesus and John the Baptist (he knows the score) respectively. Last but certainly not least  there's Rego herself and her daughter Cassie. They're the ones sat on the stairs to the right of the big cat.

There's also Zeus in the form of a bull, and imagery relating to Aesop's fables. I'd have struggled to make much of this out without the labels in the gallery and a browse of the National Gallery's website. For the last thirty or so years, Rego's work has been placed in the Sainsbury Wing Dining Rooms and has been adorned with the distinctive blue and white azulejo tiles that you see everywhere in Portugal.

Crivelli's Garden (1990-91)

Crivelli's Garden (1990-91)

Crivelli's Garden (1990-91)

Crivelli's Garden (1990-91)

Study for Crivelli's Garden (1990-91)

Study for Crivelli's Garden (1990-91)

Study for Crivelli's Garden, The Visitation (1990-91)

It's a wonderful, and complex, piece and perhaps shoving it in a cafe was a disservice to both the piece and to Rego (who would surely have been aware of its intended location) but perhaps not. I'd wager that people probably spend longer over their lunch than they do looking at any individual painting in the National or indeed any other gallery. 

Crivelli's Garden seems like the sort of work you need to spend time with, one to come back to time and again, and what better way to do it than between mouthfuls of gnocchi alla romana and sips of Montepulciano d'abruzzo (which is the sort of food and drink I imagine they serve in that particular eatery - I don't know, I've never dined there).

For Rego, the central figure of the whole piece was the figure of the woman with a book in the right hand corner of the painting. She's 'the reader', modelled on the aforementioned Alissa Bhattacharya, and it is her who is telling all these fantastical stories. Rego, though, is being modest - because the person telling, and painting, these stories - the real reader if you will - is Rego herself. This small, and free, exhibition was a great tribute to an incredible artist.

Study for Crivelli's Garden (1990-91)

Unknown photographer - a 17 year old Paula Rego in front of the blue and white tiled panel of St Gertrude on the wall of the family home in Ericeira, Portugal (1952)