The Fall of Rome

A Review of the Painting by Eugene de Leastar

In jest one quips “is the pope a catholic?” when something appears to be obvious. These days, the joke fails to find its target. With his apparent fondness for all things Marxist, the current pope would appear to be anything but a catholic. Bergoglio attempts the feat of Catholic and Marxist triangulation as if attempting to outdo the Blairs, Camerons and Clintons of this world. If only he channeled his fondness for the tripartite into upholding the tenets of the Christian trinity. It is Bergoglio’s strange death wish for the church, and all that it has supported and nurtured over centuries that Eugene de Leastar’s satirical painting, The Fall of Rome pointedly rams home to us.

The painting resonates with a dark poignancy. Divided into three main areas of action alluding perhaps to the trinity, the triangle motif is then repeated, as if to draw attention to both Bergoglio’s political triangulation and the resulting slippage and disorientation of the trinity, now depicted as destabilized. Each portion in the painting depicts one of three factions in opposition with baying, animalistic and cruel faces, demonic expressions, alongside laughing figures who show no awareness that they are standing upon the symbols of faith, in both senses of the phrase. The various enemies of the church are welcomed and celebrated, and her faithful are set aside, unnoticed by the depicted clerical characters. Faith is represented in the form of Pope Pius X, the anti-modernist who lies in the background of the painting as a living witness rather than being encased in bronze. Above him dance the wriggling demons who drag down an unadorned cross whose shadow is cast ominously behind. The message is clear. Bergoglio’s triangulation is itself the perversion of the Trinitarian structure that has shored up the Church hitherto and is now being dismantled, one little piece at a time. I may be getting ahead of myself here, how do I know this was de Leastar’s intention? I do not. Bear with me.

In the Western tradition, art and religion were (however, are no longer) inextricably linked. Many works of art were never considered to be “art” in the modern sense of the term, nor were they created by people who thought of themselves as “artists.” Often works (such as altar pieces) were created for the purposes of devotion, prayer or religious education. They were, in a sense, Christian objects in themselves, not representations. In the contemporary secular world, such works have been re-packaged as aesthetic commodities, valued and traded. In the social sphere, they are vehicles for political derision and have been superseded by endless repetitions of Duchamp’s urinal as “conceptual art,” itself a kind of satire.

The modern art student has, for some time now been encouraged to subvert the tradition into which he aspires to excel, and this is not merely one of artistry, but Christian religion. The student does not know this, because he is never taught anything about these things. In its place, he is encouraged to achieve “appropriate outcomes,” to satisfy “assessment objectives,” to make his work “relevant” to ensure that his “outputs” have “social impact.” This, as de Leastar alludes in his own writing, is not a path of discovery, but a formulaic, systematized approach. Dry and stale, it is a little like painting by numbers. This probably emanates from our semi-scientific approach to the world, one that sees the world as an objective spectacle to behold, rather than something within which we are immersed. We now see the making of art as something that can be systematized into a process akin to utilizing flow charts, to ensure we are “on message.”

This distancing, masked as a kind of “truthful” objectivity, invariably requires the inflection of the art work with Marxist hues. The artist instead of “drawing” rather draws upon the tools of critical theory either to deconstruct and position Christianity as something to be overcome, or to construct an homage to the latest politically correct fad. Not so much painting by numbers as propagandizing.

Therefore, when de Leastar presents his allegory of The Fall of Rome, the danger is that it may be misinterpreted as celebrating the very catastrophe of which it so clearly despairs. The more nuanced reception will understand it for the powerful satire it is. Consider the world that is opened up to us. The incremental destruction of Our Lady’s statue which is rhythmically hammered to pieces; Bergoglio the literal primate, his lower half as a monkey, pointing to an image of idolatry; the allusions to progressive sexual mores and the implied sliding of identities brilliantly conveyed through painterly means; the demons which populate the picture alluding to all that Bergoglio has allowed into the Vatican. Moreover, Bergoglio has not merely invited, but summoned these demons right into the heart of Christian authority. Bergoglio has, it seems, relinquished his own responsibilities (lest this needed mentioning) to all and sundry in a suicidal attempt to appear “modern” and “equal.” Furthermore, the figures standing upon the clerical collar and the sconce remind us with a sharp vividness how these symbols represent the foundations that have supported our civilisation. That one could trample upon the very symbols and structures supporting one is indeed the perversion at the heart of the picture.

Bizarrely, how could the various recognisable figures that are portrayed in the painting possibly object to the barb with any credibility? The sympathetic viewer’s sly pleasure rests on the recognition that the current culture of objectifying “deconstructing” critique, mockery even, is one they have brought upon themselves in their quest for sexual licentiousness, permissiveness and Marxian materialism. They discover now that critique and mockery can work both ways. This perhaps goes for modern art also, for how can it make sense of de Leastar’s satire which laments the loss of Christian morals and faith? These are aspects that are now made artistically redundant and are deliberately forgotten. Where does The Fall of Rome sit in the new scheme of things? De Leastar recognizes the importance in modern times of art as a process of discovery. One paints to find out what it is one has painted. Additionally, this means the notional viewer makes some of those discoveries. This is an organic, ground upwards process, not a top-down painting-by-flow chart. There is no formula here, no list of aims and objectives. In this sense, The Fall of Rome is a quintessential modern painting par excellence, where the only true radicalism now sits within the recognition and building upon an artistic and religious tradition. We might call that conservatism, or we might recognize a powerful piece of conceptual art when we see it.

Eugene de Leastar’s work can be seen on his website:

The Bergoglio Suite — Eugene de Leastar

This piece appeared in Church Militant in December 2021.