Important Notice

Painted in 1984, the present lot is indicative of the firm hold that the Catholic church had on F N Souza, well into adulthood. The artist, who grew up in a Roman Catholic family in Portuguese- ruled Goa, recalled earnest attempts at participating in mass as a child in his autobiography Words and Lines: “I would kneel and pray for hours. When the sacristan came around with the collection plate I would drop on it, with great satisfaction,... Painted in 1984, the present lot is indicative of the firm hold that the Catholic church had on F N Souza, well into adulthood. The artist, who grew up in a Roman Catholic family in Portuguese- ruled Goa, recalled earnest attempts at participating in mass as a child in his autobiography Words and Lines: “I would kneel and pray for hours. When the sacristan came around with the collection plate I would drop on it, with great satisfaction, the large copper coin given me by my grandmother. I felt I had paid an instalment for the salvation of my soul.” (F N Souza, Words and Lines, London: Villiers Publications Ltd., 1959, p. 10)

Souza became greatly disillusioned by the Church as an adult and yet it gave him some of his most enduring themes. The present lot depicts the Veil of Veronica, one of Christianity’s oldest and most venerated relics. According to legend, the veil belonged to a woman who compassionately wiped the sweat from Christ’s brow as he carried the Cross to Golgotha, the site of his Crucifixion. His image is believed to have miraculously become emblazoned on the cloth, which is preserved as a relic at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. In the foreground are instruments symbolising Christ’s suffering during his Passion, including the Crown of Thorns that was placed on his head; the Holy Sponge that was dipped in vinegar and offered to him to drink from during the Crucifixion; a whip with which he was flagellated by the Romans; nails with which he was hung from the Cross; and the spear that caused the fifth and final wound to his body, piercing his side and releasing blood and water that miraculously healed the soldier who had wounded him.

Depicted with the rigid lines of Romanesque art, Souza’s Christ “singularly lacks or rejects the quality of compassion…Suffering is ignoble, he proposes in his images, and there is no trace of sublimity in the face of those whom he shows to be suffering.” (Geeta Kapur, “Francis Newton Souza: Devil in the Flesh,” Contemporary Indian Artists, Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 1978, p. 17) The artist had likely visited an exhibition showcasing the Vatican Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1983, a year before the present lot was painted. Among the works on display was Georges Rouault’s La Sainte Face, 1946. Rouault was a devout Catholic who drew inspiration from biblical stories, including the Passion of Christ, and made no fewer than eight paintings of The Holy Face. His deep influence on Souza’s work is reflected in its subject matter and his quintessential thick black contours.

Veronica is considered by some to be a misnomer for the Latin words “vera icona” or true image. The present lot can be viewed as an allegory for Souza the artist to whom the image was paramount and who was often persecuted by audiences and critics for presenting the truth through his art, which they deemed to be “obscene” and was at odds with the prudishness of the Catholic milieu he was raised in.

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