Goya, Doña Isabel de Porcel 1805, a photo by doodle_juice on Flickr.

I wrote this piece as an experiment in first narrative character development.

I was four when my parents divorced. Forced to a marriage, my mother after 12 years finally had enough,  she had to make a choice of staying or leaving, she chose to leave. I had two older sisters, eight and the other ten. For us the divorce was devastating. She wasn’t a scarlet woman and when I became older before she died I understood and forgave her.
So we managed to survive somehow.
One day My father took all the family pictures cut Mum out of every single one put them in a metal can poured paraffine and burnt them. I sat down and watched as the image of my mother slowly faded first into blue flames then turned back.
A year later after leaving me either in care of whoever he could, or alone in the house by myself with some food like a cat! he became friends or at least found out about a man an artist who had a young daughter, and he developed an interest in finding out about the girl. Many Iranian commercial artists used to have these shops where they sold their forged copies of master pieces. To sweeten the relationship he bought two paintings and a pencil drawing. He brought them home one day. The pencil drawing was a curvy fifties Hollywood style nude that had just come out of water and had covered herself with a towel, the other two were the picture that you see and a night landscape of a port. I asked Dad who is this one? Dad said its Josephine Bonaparte. Really Dad? Yes sure that is what the Artist said!
We met the family and loved the girl she wanted to marry. She was so talented and charming and made a puppet for me out of nylon stockings. But Dad decided not to pursue the courtship. She is too young, he thought. Or she was perhaps not curvy enough for him. Knowing my Dad he only thinks with only one part of his brain and he has paid a heavy prize for that!
Anyway, once again I had become a five-year old managing my own affairs whilst Dad was at work and my sisters were away at school, and my only companion? Dona Isabel de Porcel by Goya but forged by the father of the bride not to be.
Years later when I had lived in UK for a good few years I came across her actual portrait in the national gallery London. She is beautiful, isn’t she? My mother Dona!
So who was she?
The portrait depicts Isabel Lobo Velasco de Porcel, who was born at Ronda around 1780 and was the second wife of Antonio Porcel (a liberal also portrayed by Goya in 1806; yet his painting was lost in a fire). Isabel’s husband was 25 years older than she, and they met when she was 20 years old. Antonio Porcel was a friend of Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, who in turn brought him in contact with Goya, who lived in close proximity of the couple’s domicile.
The half-length portrait depicts a young woman dressed in typical Spanish attire, a white shirt and a black mantilla. In spite of her “maja” attire, the richness of the textiles and her lady-like appearance give the picture an aristocratic elegance. In certain epochs the clothes worn by the Spanish wealthy class were an imitation of the popular attires.

My father did marry again. He married a woman who looked like the pencil drawing. She was good at first but after her first birth when she felt secure in her marriage she showed her true colours grey and black! They stayed together for many years but she made his life hell.
When he brought things from Iran, he had lost pretty much everything he ever had to the pencil drawn woman, my step-mother. I just asked him for one thing, I said Dad I’ve stood on my own feet all my life and have not had a penny help since I was nineteen but I just ask for one thing, I want that portrait. He said but it was all torn up now, it happened by accident when we were moving house. I said it doesn’t matter, just bring it. Will you restore it now that you can paint yourself can you restore it? he said. I’ll see what I can do. So he brought it and I looked, she was only a shadow of the original, her face was torn all the way to her belly and the work was not that skillful but I took it with pride. My wife couldn’t understand my excitement but that picture meant a lot to me, or at least to the five-year old that I once was. I took Dad to the portrait Gallery one day and he sighed when he saw the original, he stood there for about four minutes silent, and said do you remember? … do you remember? and I said yes Dad I remember!

He became free from the pencil drawn witch! and as a 82-year-old of he goes out with a walking stick and a cheerful buddy who is about the same age . His friend has a fifty-five year old girlfriend and dad fancies the same idea. The fact that he has no money left doesn’t bother him, he still dreams just like a teenager. As for the faked Dona, she is in my Garage which I use as a studio and every now and then when I’m painting I pay her a visit.

Why a surrogate mother? Because Thanks to Dona I was not left as a forgotten child and I was reborn as a new being, an Art lover!

Related blog…