Mysterious portrait of a woman revealed beneath Picasso painting
kraken торArt historians studying a painting by Pablo Picasso have uncovered the mysterious portrait of a woman, hidden beneath its surface.
The portrait of the woman was lost when Picasso painted over it, probably a few months afterward, in 1901 to depict his sculptor friend Mateu Fernández de Soto sitting at a table in hues of blues and greens.
But, almost 125 years later, the original portrait’s outlines have been revealed by the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, when they examined the artwork using infrared and X-ray imaging ahead of an exhibition.
The portrait of the woman “literally emerged before our eyes … piece-by-piece,” because of the mosaic-like way an infrared camera scans an image, Barnaby Wright, deputy head of the Courtauld Gallery, explained.
Though experts “were fairly convinced there was something lurking underneath the surface because … you can see brushstrokes … that didn’t really relate to the finished portrait,” they didn’t know what they would find once they began scanning it, Wright told CNN on Monday.
They are still unsure of the woman’s identity, though she resembles several other women Picasso painted in Paris in 1901, as she shares the distinctive chignon hairstyle that was fashionable in the French capital at the time.
