Amália Rodrigues in 2020—Mapping Some Ingenuously Improbable Portraits of the Fado Diva

How have female musicians been represented in art through history? Which media have been favoured for these representations? These two questions are currently of pivotal interest to researchers in the field of musical iconography. Little attention has however been paid to more unusual representations (including the ingenuously improbable), such as those that are irreverent in terms of medium or style. Often ignored by the academic community because they are perceived as ‘lesser’ art-forms, these representations can enjoy enormous popularity and wide, even mass, exposure. Amália Rodrigues (1920–1999) was an artist who was the subject of this kind of representation. In the centenary year of her birth, this article aims to map some improbable representations of the fado singer during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and to analyse their iconography and iconology. Sugar packets, street walls and metro stations all exhibit Amália and seek to express her essence, her emotion and her song.