Beneath the somber tones of Picasso’s Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto, conservators have revealed a hidden painting of a mysterious woman, concealed for over a century. Advanced imaging by the Courtauld Institute of Art in London uncovered this earlier figure beneath the Blue Period work, offering fresh insights into Picasso’s creative process and sparking curiosity about the woman’s identity.
Painted in 1901, when Picasso was just 19, this work is one of his earliest from the Blue Period, which lasted until around 1904 and featured a cool, monochromatic palette. It portrays Picasso’s friend and fellow Spanish artist, Mateu Fernández de Soto.
“We have long suspected another painting lay behind the portrait of de Soto because the surface of the work has tell-tale marks and textures of something below,” explained Barnaby Wright, head of the Courtauld Gallery. “Now we know that this is the figure of a woman. You can even start to make out her shape just by looking at the painting with the naked eye.”
Conservators at the Courtauld Institute of Art, in collaboration with the Oskar Reinhart Collection, used advanced imaging technology to analyze the canvas. X-ray and infrared images of Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto revealed the head of an unidentified woman, positioned to the right of de Soto, facing the opposite direction. With her hair in a chignon bun and a neutral expression, she resembles other subdued female figures from Picasso’s Blue Period, such as Woman with Crossed Arms (1901–2) and The Absinthe Drinker (1901).
At the time, Picasso was just beginning to develop his somber Blue Period style, influenced by the 1901 suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Picasso moved into Casagemas’ former Parisian rooms and set up a studio there, which he shared with de Soto. The Courtauld conservators believe the woman’s identity may never be known—she could have been a random subject from a local café, a model, or a friend.