Paula Rego - Angel

This is a powerful and disturbing piece of art by one of the foremost anti-patriarchal artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Paula Rego. Like others from the same series, it was inspired by a novel, The Crime of Father Amaro by Eça de Queirós, first published in 1875 and which became a major succès de scandale in Portugal. Although it was not widely read outside the Lusophone world at the time, a much later film adaptation renewed the controversy with its release in 2002, drawing protests from some Catholics dismayed by its anti-clerical theme and for what they saw as a sacrilegious treatment of their sacred iconography. Despite this uproar, or possibly because of it, it was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.  Rego made this painting a few years before the film and had long felt enthralled by the novel’s realism, feeling as sympathetic to its heroine as she was appalled by its deeply unlovable eponymous padre. It was reportedly also her father’s favourite novel, and I’ve really enjoyed its Zolaesque bite in my own reading of it as part of my research.

Paula Rego, Angel, 1998, pastel on paper mounted on aluminum, Centro de Arte Moderna,  Lisbon

Amaro is a self-serving, manipulative and immoral character who betrays his position of religious authority. He falls in love with his landlady’s daughter Amélia and, incapable of adhering to his vow of celibacy, fathers a child by her. Rather than accepting responsibility for this he firstly tries to convince her former fiancé to marry her and thereby take on the infant, and when this fails, he engages the services of a so-called ‘angel-maker’, a wet nurse who for a payment, would wilfully neglect and kill an unwanted child. This heinous practice was common across nineteenth century Europe and its perpetrators rationalised their murders by claiming to ‘save’ women from ruin. As the babies were usually baptised before they were killed, and according to the tenets of Catholicism, it was thought that they would bypass purgatory and find themselves despatched directly to heaven as little angels. In the novel, so shocked is Amélia by having her child snatched away that she dies of an aneurism while Amaro covers his tracks and moves to another parish. The novel is at once sharp-eyed, hard-hitting, sensational and unflinching in its condemnation of hypocrisy.

The ‘angel’ in this painting embodies some of the artist’s conflicted feelings about the role of women in society that the novel evokes without portraying any single character. Holding a green pommelled sword in one hand, and a sponge in the other, the figure confronts the viewer with a balance of mortal threat and tender comfort and care. Religious allusions spring to mind. The sponge reminds us of the incident in Christ’s Passion when during the crucifixion, he was mockingly offered one soaked in vinegary wine to slake his thirst. Relatedly, the sword may be a reference to the later episode when his side was speared as a way to confirm his demise. These references are thus suggestive of the atonement through violent action, of sin as well as salvation, absolution, and deliverance.

She wears a gold and black hemmed silk-taffeta skirt and a tightly fitted charcoal boddice, loosened at the neck and with ornately puffed sleeves. The colour polarity parallels the divisions in her capabilities. The black is funereal, a reminder of mortality. The gold indicates authority and transcendence over ignorance. She is the picture of Portuguese mid-Victorian bourgeois respectability with a suggestion of amour-plated martial lustre. She shimmers forbiddingly rather than alluringly. Her black hair is worn tight to her skull to reveal a slightly sweaty sheen to her brow. With her head tilted to one side, she wears an expression that is not easy to read. The mouth’s upturned corners suggest a smile, but the eyes are humourless. It is a look that speaks of strength and power but appears disconcertingly deranged.

The painting also has some of the theatricality and intensity of the work of another of Rego’s great artistic sources of inspiration, the seventeenth century master Diego Velázquez. Looking at Angel, I was put in mind of his full-length portrait of the actor Pablo de Valladolid.

Diego Velázquez, Portrait of Pablo de Valladolid, circa 1635, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Set against a similarly neutral (unplaceable) backdrop, the figure is painted face-on in front of the viewer, in a pose of utter confidence and conviction that seems to say ‘this is me, take me or leave me’ as he stands before us, mid-declamation.  Rego’s Angel has something of the same self-assurance, as if she is enacting a ritual role conferred on her. She has assumed the mantle of a priest, subsuming the figure of any Father Amaro, anyone who has effectively abdicated their office through pusillanimity. In her own celebration of her dark Mass, this angel holds not a chalice or paten, those vessels bearing the blood and body of Christ, but instruments of dichotomous vengeance and mercy. In fact, duality is at the heart of this work. Does the figure represent the tecedeira de anjos (weaver of angels) figure, the wet nurse whose practice it was to starve, stifle or poison her charge? Or does she stand for a Furies-like avenging angel, a latter-day incarnation of one of the goddesses of retributive justice, standing ready to protect the child against the forces of blood-money turpitude, chauvinism, religion, class and poverty that are ranged against a vulnerable mother. More likely, she is a synthesis of these and stands as an acknowledgement that, thanks to systemic social injustice, women can find themselves performing either function.

The most often depicted weapon-bearing angel that we see in western art is the Archangel Michael.

Hans Memling, Angel with a Sword, 1479-80, oil on oak panel, The Wallace Collection, London

It was he who, according to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, cast Satan out of heaven and who was the protector of the chosen people. He is usually depicted holding a sword and embodies notions of warrior-like power, protection, judgement and justice. Sometimes he is depicted in his role as a psychopomp, a weigher of souls, and is often shown holding a pair of scales. He has the responsibility of guiding the newly deceased into heaven and protecting them against the forces of evil. Rego’s Angel is similarly ready to ward off wickedness in the face of death but to ambivalently comprehend it too.

In 1998, Portugal held a referendum to decide on the decriminalisation of abortion. The vote came down very narrowly against legalisation which meant that the back-street procedures which endangered women’s lives would continue. Infuriated by this, the artist produced a series of works depicting women and girls about to undergo, or having just undergone, clandestine terminations. These illuminate the grim reality of their predicament. Angel was produced before these paintings but in the same year as the vote but echo the themes running through The Crimes of Father Amaro, particularly those relating to the need to confront androcentric social structures. Angel demonstrates the artist’s recognition and abhorrence of injustice in the coercively controlled rituals suffered by women out of necessity and also a concomitant desire to enfranchise their reproductive privileges and their bodily autonomy.