Paolo Roversi photographed Candida Romero in the garden of a convent in Corsica. This great artist also loves a quality of secrecy in his subjects, their gaze into the Absolute. He chose a whiter, more transparent luminosity than usual, and allowed his muse to move about in complete liberty. Candida/The Nun is beautiful in these photographs. But more than that, she is vulnerable. Devoured by the creeping ivy, she is already subjected to Nature’s destructive work. There is something ominous about these so perfectly estheticised scenes. This anxiety may come from the ruins one sees all around, or from the nearly palpable darkness, or still yet from the fragility of the lonely, abandoned silhouette.
Berthe Morisot comes to mind. Her delicate quality that becomes a force. Her gentleness that can be implacable. Candida Romero, too, is more engaged in the journey than its completion. It is the act of seeking which drives her, the search for a meaning to give her life and her art.
Whatever the case may be, there is an extreme modesty in her work. Just as in the work of Berthe. Modesty, but also a kind of raw
sensitivity.

The form Candida has chosen for her reappearance after an immersion into this legend is not without significance: it is a sacred form, fallen into disuse, and which now one only sees in churches or certain museums of Bruges or Florence. The retable, which once ornamented church altars, responds to her unyielding quest and yearning for communion. Altarpieces of this type can be opened and closed like a book. In its verdigris iron frame, with photos evocative of glossy magazine pages and rambling ivy that seems to overflow, the piece tells a story of life and death. Ancient words fixed into the canvas echo out to us, spectators bearing witness to a metamorphosis and a mystery. These are words of passion, but also of prayer: they travel across time.
This contemporary altarpiece expresses great force and poetry. It also contains, at least in my view, a challenge by the artist: just like the Portuguese nun, betrayed but still burning with the same love, Candida Romero seeks neither to enchant nor to persuade. She goes to the very limits of her dream to feel it with intensity.