Hidden Painting Revealed Beneath Portrait from Picasso’s Blue Period
The most studied period of Pablo Picasso’s career, it seems, still had a secret to keep: a mystery woman hidden beneath a well-known portrait, now revealed by conservators at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. X-ray and infrared analysis were conducted on Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto (1901), a depiction of a Spanish sculptor who befriended Picasso during his Blue Period, a stylistically pivotal though melancholic moment in the painter’s early oeuvre. Over the course of three years, Picasso diverged from painting convention, utilizing expressive brushwork and a now famously moody blue-green palette. His Blue Period paintings have become widely popular and are now the subject of a wealth of scholarship. Related Articles Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto is particularly well known, given its age and composition. It contains an ode to the friend and artist whose suicide plunged Picasso into despondency. The Courtauld findings suggest that Mateu Fernández de Soto wasn’t the planned subject of the canvas, as the newly discovered figure of the woman was likely painted only …