Portrait of mystery woman found beneath famous Pablo Picasso painting, conservators say

USA Today

12-02-2025

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Conservators in London, England used infrared and X-ray imaging to reveal a never-before-seen portrait of a woman beneath a popular painting by renowned artist Pablo Picasso.
The Courtauld Institute of Art, a specialist college at the University of London that studies the history of art and conservation, said it discovered the mystery woman's portrait by using the imaging technology to further examine one of Picasso's very first paintings from his famous Blue Period. The conservators took x-ray and infrared images of "Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto," a portrait painted by a 19-year-old Picasso in 1901 depicting his Spanish sculptor friend, Mateu Fernández de Soto.
The portrait was inspected before being put on display as part of the exhibition, "Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection," which opens on Feb. 14 at the Sammlung Oskar Reinhart Am Römerholz Museum in Winterthur, Switzerland, according to the Courtauld.
'This is truly a picture of great complexity, revealing its secrets over the years," Kerstin Richter, director of the Oskar Reinhart Collection 'Am Römerholz,' said in a news release. "When Oskar Reinhart acquired it in 1935, it was simply considered to be a portrait of an unknown woodcarver. Now we not only know the personality depicted, his significance in Picasso's life after the death of his closest friend, but we can also visualize the artistic development process of the young painter layer by layer.'
Who is the woman in the portrait?
The infrared and x-ray images beneath the portrait led to the conservators seeing the painting of the woman, which they said was likely created just a few months earlier. The form of the woman's head, her curved shoulders and her fingers can clearly be seen in the portrait. She is also wearing a "distinctive chignon hairstyle," which was fashionable in Paris at the time, the Courtauld said.
'Specialist imaging technology such as that used by conservators at The Courtauld may allow us to see the hand of an artist to understand their creative process," Aviva Burnstock, professor of conservation at Courtauld, said in the news release."In revealing this previously hidden figure we can shed light on a pivotal moment in Picasso's career.'
According to the conservators, the woman resembles the women seen seated in several other paintings Picasso made that year, such as "Absinthe Dinker" (located at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia) and "Woman with Crossed Arms" (located at the Kunstmuseum Basel museum in Basel, Switzerland).
More research into the painting and a detailed analysis could uncover more about the mystery woman, but her identity may never be found, according to the conservators, who suggest that she may have been a model, a friend or even a lover posing for one of Picasso's paintings.
Why was the woman's portrait beneath the 'de Soto' painting?
The Courtauld said there's evidence toward the bottom of the painting that suggests that it was a "much-reworked canvas" and that the mystery woman might have been a figure painted in Picasso's "earlier Impressionistic style."
The famed artist also would often reuse canvases at the time because he did not have much money, however, he did enjoy the process of painting one work over another, according to the Courtauld.
When Picasso painted "Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto," it was during a crucial stage in the young artist's stylistic development, the Courtland said. At the time, he was moving away from colorful and impressionistic paintings, and more toward the melancholy artistic style that encapsulated the career-defining Blue Period, according to the conservators.
What was Picasso's Blue Period?
This Blue Period was inspired in 1901 in part by the suicide of Spanish painter Carlos Casagemas, who was a good friend of Picasso's, the Courtland said. Picasso took over the rooms where Casagemas had lived in Paris and set up his own studio there, the specialist college added.