1) Crucifix
This makeshift crucifix was constructed out of a ladder. The blue tie around one of the rungs was left over from the making of an earlier picture, when the same model posed as Mary Magdalene.

2) Jesus Figure
One of Rego’s favourite models, Lila Nunes, posed as the female Christ-figure from McDonagh’s The Pillowman. The modelling session took almost an entire day as Lila tried different positions behind and in front of the ladder. One of the fairytales told in the play is about a little girl who wants to be just like Christ. One day her evil stepparents get her to ‘carry a heavy wooden cross around the sitting room hundreds of times until her legs buckled and her shins broke and she could do nothing but stare at her little legs going the wrong way’.

3) Cape
Paula Rego bought the cape worn by the Pillowman at a sale held at the Royal Opera House. It was part of the costume for an important medieval king.

4) The Pillowman
Paula Rego made the Pillowman out of eiderdown and pillows which she stuffed into stockings. He is a tragic and nightmarish creature first described in one of the fairytales central to McDonagh’s The Pillowman. Here’s McDonagh’s description of the character, ‘...a man who did not look like normal men. He was about nine feet tall and he was all made up of these fluffy pink pillows…the Pillowman had to look like this, he had to look soft and safe, because…the Pillowman’s job was to get children to kill themselves.’

5) Mother and boy
This woman dressed in a bathing suit represents Paula Rego’s mother. One of her models posed for this figure alongside a doll who stands in as a child playing in the sand.

6) The little boy
Paula Rego constructed this little boy for another work and then re-used him for this picture. He is a preschool boy who appears all grown up and he wears a hat that alludes to wartime.

7) The Doll
The little doll sitting on the Pillowman’s lap represents The Little Prince, a book written by the French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The toy refers back to Paula Rego’s childhood when celebrities like Peggy Guggenheim, Max Ernst, and Saint-Exupery visited Estoril during the Second World War.

8) Couch
This is a psychiatrist’s couch that was given to Paula Rego.

9) Tree, Lighthouse, Fortress
Paula Rego began this picture with the palm tree, fortress and little lighthouse by the beach. This setting depicts an area in Portugal where she grew up.

10) Pillowman’s Legs
The legs of the Pillowman are tied up and amputated to keep the stuffing from falling out. The way his legs are bound up refers to the way that sailors used to have their limbs immersed in tar when they had been severely injured during the war.

11) Blue Dress

12) Granddaughter
The little girl dressed in a green shirt and sitting on this couch is Paula Rego’s granddaughter. When Rego began this picture, she intended to use a mannequin and then later introduced live models.

13) Apples
These green apples scattered on the floor were carved into little apple-men by Paula Rego’s granddaughter, who modelled for the picture. In McDonagh’s play there is a fairytale about a little girl who is treated badly by her father and so she ‘gets some apples and carves some little men out of these apples, all little fingers, little eyes, little toes, and she gives them to her father but she says to him they’re not to be eaten…(the) father swallows a bunch of these applemen whole, just to spite her, and they have razor blades in them, and he dies in agony’

14) The duvet cover
This shredded duvet cover draped in the background once covered the bed belonging to Paula Rego and her late husband, Victor Willing.

15) The Pillowboy
Rego hired this doll from a shop. For the picture she has covered its head with a stocking. Initially, this section of the painting included a porcupine that she rented from a taxidermy shop, but the animal was eventually replaced by the Pillowboy.

16) Blue dress
Paula Rego bought this bright blue dress at her local Oxfam shop. In her studio Rego has a whole wall filled with second-hand costumes that she uses to dress up her models.

17) Yellow Car
This yellow car is described in one of the fairytales contained in The Pillowman. At first there was also a kaleidoscope and a barking dog in Rego’s picture, as these elements were also mentioned in the play. When the Pillowman first meets the Pillowboy they play with these toys while he describes his sad job that involved helping children to kill themselves. Then, the little Pillowboy ‘poured the can of petrol all over himself with his smiley mouth still smiling, and the Pillowman through his gloopy tears, said, ‘Thank you…’ The last thing he heard was the screams of the hundred thousand children he’d helped to commit suicide coming back to life and going on to lead cold, wretched lives…’