Art historians, while studying a painting by Pablo Picasso, unexpectedly discovered a mysterious female portrait hidden beneath the visible image. This portrait was previously unknown, concealed under layers of paint, and has only recently been brought to light.
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02-11, 2025Picasso covered the female portrait in 1901, possibly months later, when he depicted his sculptor friend, Mateu Fernandez de Soto, sitting at a table using shades of blue and green. However, approximately 125 years later, the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, while examining the painting using infrared and X-ray imaging techniques before an exhibition, revealed the outlines of the original portrait.
Barnaby Wright, Deputy Head of The Courtauld Gallery, stated that the female portrait "emerged bit by bit, quite palpably before our eyes" as the infrared camera scanned the image in a mosaic-like fashion. Experts were previously "fairly sure that there was something underneath the surface, because... you could see brushstrokes... that didn't quite relate to the finished portrait," but they did not know what the scan would reveal.
Despite this, experts remain uncertain about the woman's identity, although she resembles several other female portraits Picasso created in Paris in 1901, as she also sports a distinctive updo popular in the French capital at the time. Wright said, "She may just forever be an anonymous model." He added that they are working to determine her identity. "She may just be a model of Picasso's... she may be a lover, she may be a friend."
Picasso was only 19 years old when he arrived in Paris in 1901, but he was already searching for different ways to depict his subjects. Wright said that by abandoning the earlier portrait and covering it up, Picasso may have "not only changed the subject, but he also changed his style, because he developed the way in which he painted his famous blue period paintings." During the Blue Period, Picasso used more melancholic colors to depict his subjects, as he deviated from his earlier Impressionistic style, a shift partly influenced by the suicide of his close friend, Carlos Casagemas.
X-ray imaging revealed that Picasso may have repainted the canvas as many as three or four times, partly because he could not easily afford to buy new materials, but also because "it's very clear that he... liked the process of turning one image into another," Wright said. "He didn't cover the canvas with white paint in between changing subjects in order to give him a clean slate. He painted his friend's image directly on top of the woman... one figure emerging from another, turning one figure into another."
Even so, the remnants of the female portrait are still visible to the trained eye. Wright said, "Once you know from this technical image what's underneath, and then you go back to the finished painting, you can see some traces of it very clearly - her eye, her ear, and her hair." "The ghostly presence of this woman is actually not only underneath the surface, but it's actually pressing into the surface itself."
“Portrait of Mateu Fernandez de Soto” will be on display at The Courtauld Gallery in London from February 14 to May 26.
