Ruth Leon revisits Paula Rego

Rego’s ‘Crivelli’s Garden’- National Gallery

 Former National Gallery Educator Ailsa Bhattacharya, and Lecturer Lizzie Perrotte tell us what it was like sitting for Paula Rego’s mural ‘Crivelli’s Garden‘ which is the Gallery’s Picture of the Month.

This video is a animated conversation between two Paula Rego experts who were also friends and models of the artist.

Thirty years ago, Dame Paula Rego (1935–2022), the National Gallery’s first Associate Artist (1990–2), was commissioned to create a mural for the then new Sainsbury Wing Dining Room. The result, Rego’s ‘Crivelli’s Garden’, took its inspiration from an altarpiece by the 15th-century Italian artist Carlo Crivelli,  ‘La Madonna della Rondine (The Madonna of the Swallow)’.

Rego reimagined Crivelli’s house and garden to explore the narratives of women in biblical history and folklore based on paintings across the collection and stories from the medieval Golden Legend. Her figures inspired by the Virgin Mary, Saint Catherine, Mary Magdalene and Delilah, share the stage with other women from biblical and mythological histories.

Rego saw the work as a tribute to the artists who had also used the Golden Legend as a source for their paintings. She did not necessarily replicate the women saints portrayed in the National Gallery Collection but drew inspiration from them to depict figures and people she knew. These included friends, members of her family and staff at the National Gallery whom she asked to sit for her, including Erika Langmuir, Lizzie Perrotte and Ailsa Bhattacharya who were members of the Education Department at the time.  

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