Castellanos portraits of Benedict XVI and John Paul II.
Papal portraiture:
Cuban-American painter completes
B16 portrait for April anniversaries
by Pauline Tovey
Diocesan newspaper of Arlington, Virginia
Issue of April 4, 2012
Since childhood, Cuban-American portraitist Sylvia Castellanos has been intrigued by the human face. That fascination and her love of drawing have led her to paint hundreds of portraits — from Washington, D.C., dignitaries to Central American Maya campesinos.
And with each portrait, her hope is to capture the person’s soul. Not a small task in itself, but her objective became even more challenging when she chose to paint the Church’s spiritual leaders Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.
“I had a personal desire to paint the popes because this is my Church and these are the leaders of my Church,” said Castellanos, who began painting Pope John Paul II in the last months of his life.
“I was in my 20s when he was elected pope,” she said. “You would have to have been there to understand the significance of this young pope who liked to ski and mountain climb, who was so vibrant, alert and intelligent.
“With the passage of time, he had become this old man with Parkinson’s disease who could hardly walk.
“I wanted to try to catch something to bring back into people’s consciousness that this was the real man and this is how he deserves to be remembered,” she said.
Since Castellanos immigrated with her family to the United States from her native Havana at age 9, she said she was “especially interested that John Paul came from a country enslaved by communism.”
“I learned later that he was doing things behind the scenes to fight communism, and that made him especially dear to me.”
After she completed the portrait in 2006, it was exhibited for five years at Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, where she received much praise for capturing the pope’s essence. She values such compliments highly, especially since she never met Pope John Paul, nor his successor, Pope Benedict, whom she began painting in 2010.
Mostly self-taught, Castellanos painted her first “commissioned” portrait at the age of 13. Her portrait of Abraham Lincoln for a school project drew the attention of her principal, who commissioned her to do a portrait of the assistant principal for $10.
Years later, after obtaining a graduate degree from Princeton University in New Jersey, Castellanos moved to the Washington metro area in the early 1970s. For the remainder of the decade she served as research director of the Senate Steering Committee while doing commissioned portraits for prominent people on Capitol Hill, including Congressional members and international personnel. During those years she studied with portraitist Danni Dawson at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria.
“That was the only study of art I have ever done,” said Castellanos. “She taught me the things fundamental to my outlook.”
“I seek to catch emotions in the way a perfume maker captures a fragrance so that by uncorking a bottle, people can experience again the full dimension of the scent,” said Castellanos.
To capture the essence of Pope Benedict, Castellanos pored through photographs.
“People who have met Benedict talk about the kindness and holiness he gives off. I wanted to catch that,” she said.
Castellanos completed her first portrait of the Pope late in 2010, but after carefully observing viewers’ reactions, Castellanos was dissatisfied with her work. She stored the painting for a year and half until this past January when she began repainting his face from scratch. This time she’s pleased with the result.
“The whole point of doing a portrait is to capture the person, his emotions and who the person is. If you don’t do that, it’s not a good portrait,” Castellanos said. “People say I’ve got the likeness now, and I hope that is the case.”
With two important dates coming up for Pope Benedict — his birthday April 16 and the anniversary of his ascension to the papacy April 19 — Castellanos hopes she can find the right place, possibly in Washington, to exhibit her work.
“The Church will be marking both these events, and maybe my painting can have a small role in whatever form its commemoration takes,” she said.
Her ultimate ambition is for the painting to be exhibited at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington.
Castellanos hopes her portrait of Pope Benedict will appeal to those outside Catholic circles, as well.
“To the extent that it’s seen by non-Catholics, I hope they will appreciate the personal quality that I tried to include,” she said.
“And when they look at it they will say, ‘so this is what he is like as a person.’”
There have not been too many portraits of Benedict XVI that have been publicized. The following are those we have reported about in the PRF and this Forum through the years - two of them date from 2005, the other 3 from 2007:
From left:
1. Portrait painted by Igor Babailov, Russian-American, for the Pope's 80th birthday. It was kept at the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, DC, and the Pope saw it when he visited in 2008. Babailov was allowed to attend a General Audience close to the Pope to do his studies for the portrait.
2. Portrait painted by Natalia Tsarkova, Russian artist commissioned by the Vatican Museums to do this portrait, presented to the Pope at the Vatican in December 2007. Tsarkova had previously painted a portait of John Paul II acquired by the Vatican Museums. She is the first woman known to have painted a papal portrait.
3. Portrait painted by Ulisse Sartini, Italian artist, who did this on his own, in 2005, when he was commissioned by the Vatican Museums to paint the portrait which was executed by Vatican artisans into the mosaic painting that was added to the gallery of papal mosaic portraits running across the top of the walls inside the Basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mure.
4. British painter Michael Noakes who was commissioned by the Vatican in 2005 to paint the portrait shown - it is supposed to have been the first official portrait of the Pope. The Pope sat for Noakes in 2006 although the portrait was not done till 2007. All these years, I have been unable to find a photograph of the portrait by itself.
5. Pope Benedict with Sartini's original tondo portrait on the day its corresponding mosaic was installed inside St. Paul's Basilica.
Addendum: By coincidence, Tsarkova painted Benedict XVI the year he turned 80, since the portrait of John Paul II that she did was commissioned for his 80th birthday in 2000. Of course, benedict is painted as he looked at the time, whereas John Paul II, already showing the ravages of advanced Parkinson's at the time, is shown in a idealized timeless context.
Tsarkova said at the time she presented the portrait to Benedict XVI in 2007 that 'he liked the angels best'. The artist had decided to depict the cherubs that are a distinctive feature of the Leo XIII 'throne' Benedict is shown on, as celestial presences hovering next to the seated Pope. Although I can discern a Crucifix in the heavenly montage, I cannot discern the Holy Spirit (who is carved at the top of the chairback), but the picture resolution is not clear enough. I love the artist's fantasy in painting the celestial presences! Perhaps she advanced in spiritual awareness since doing the JPII portrait, in which the background is St. Peter's Basilica.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/04/2012 13:35]