Hidden talent

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Scientists and art experts have found a hidden painting beneath one of Pablo Picasso’s first masterpieces, “The Blue Room,” using advances in infrared imagery to reveal a bow-tied man with his face resting on his hand.

In 2008, improved infrared imagery revealed for the first time a man’s bearded face resting on his hand with three rings on his fingers. He is dressed in a jacket and bow tie. A technical analysis confirmed the hidden portrait is a work Picasso likely painted just before “The Blue Room,” curators said. After the portrait was discovered, conservators have been using other technology to scan the painting for further insights.

Scholars are researching who this man might be and why Picasso painted him. They have ruled out the possibility that it was a self-portrait. One possible figure is the Paris art dealer Ambrose Villard who hosted Picasso’s first show in 1901. But there is no documentation and no clues left on the canvass, so the research continues.
Hidden pictures have been found under other important Picasso paintings. A technical analysis of “La Vie” at the Cleveland Museum of Art revealed Picasso significantly reworked the painting’s composition.

And a portrait of a moustached man founded beneath Picasso’s painting “Woman Ironing” at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan.