HIDDEN LADY

Mystery Woman Found Underneath One of Picasso’s Paintings

The portrait was found underneath another with imaging technology.

A portrait of a mystery woman was found under one of Pablo Picasso’s earliest Blue Period paintings, revealed using imaging technology. Courtauld Institute of Art conservators took x-ray and infrared images of the 1901 painting “Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto‚” a portrait of Picasso’s Spanish sculptor friend. According to the institute, Picasso often reused the same canvases because he didn’t have a lot of money at the time. In the x-ray image, the face of a woman can be seen behind Mateu Fernández de Soto, with the figure then completely covered in the finished product of the man. The woman’s identity is unknown, but she could have been a friend, model, or even a lover, according to analysts. “Wearing a distinctive chignon hairstyle, fashionable in Paris at the time, she bears a resemblance to several paintings of seated women that Picasso made that year," the statement on the reveal wrote. “Further research into the painting and detailed analysis could reveal more about the mystery woman, but it is not certain her identity will be established.”