Close Looking: Marina Warner on Paula Rego
Marina Warner’s 'Pentimento' is written in response to Paula Rego’s drawing in pencil and conte, 'St Mary of Egypt' (2011) and tells the story of the little-known saint from fragments of reports of those who knew and remembered her. Knowing Rego’s love of storytelling and character studies, Warner has written a fictional account of a professor who has discovered Rego’s drawing and has pieced together memories of the saint gathered from a fictional fourth-century palimpsest she is researching from the city of Fustat (old Cairo).