Picasso's Pentimenti: Hidden Layers of La miséreuse accroupie

Collaboration with the Art Gallery of Ontario uses spectroscopic imaging technologies to see what the artist had painted over

X-ray fluorescence instrument setup for the scan of La miséreuse accroupie © Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO)

Center co-director Francesca Casadio examines the XRF setup © Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO)

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was known to reuse supports for his artworks, as he abandoned and reworked images, often leaving the traces of prior ideas in the composition as pentimenti. These pentimenti During his Blue Period (1901-04), when he had moved from Barcelona to Paris and was living as a struggling artist, he reused supports frequently. “It would be very interesting to preserve photographically, not the stages, but the metamorphoses of a picture,” Picasso told his friend Christian Zervos. “Possibly one might then discover the path followed by the brain in materializing a dream.” 

Picasso used his camera extensively to document his artistic processes, but he could not have anticipated that researchers would later use innovative imaging technology to document the layers of his paintings that suggest these metamorphoses: discarded ideas, reworked compositions, and more. La miséreuse accroupie (1902) is a fascinating example from this period for investigating the visible and hidden traces of this reuse practice. 

Art historians have long been aware of these hidden layers. Through close observation of the surface of La miséreuse accroupie, conservators discovered distinct textures that did not match the visible composition. An x-ray radiograph taken at the Art Gallery of Ontario in the 1990s revealed a hidden landscape painting under the visible layer when the image is rotated counter-clockwise ninety degrees. This landscape was painted by a Barcelona artist whose identity has never been established. Picasso incorporated elements of this landscape into La miséreuse by reusing some of the lines of the hills as the contours of the woman’s back.

In collaboration with the Art Gallery of Ontario (Canada), and the National Gallery of Art, (Washington), the Center for Scientific Study of the Arts undertook a technical study of La miséreuse accroupie to learn more about his materials and the ways that the underpaintings relate to other works from the period. The study was interdisciplinary and collaborative. Curators used archival and prior historical research on Picasso’s processes and visual sources to help generate questions that directed the technical analysis, which was enhanced by scientific imaging techniques. 

True to Picasso’s techniques from the period, the palette of the surface layer is mostly blues painted with either the iron-rich Prussian blue or ultramarine. Chrome-based yellow pigments are also visible. To learn more about the hidden layers, researchers used a variety of non-invasive scanning techniques, including diffuse hypersprectral infrared reflectography (HSIR), fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy (FORS), and macro X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF). These scans reveal elemental maps that can suggest the pigments used in these layers beneath the visible surface.

Diffuse hyperspectral infrared reflectography was performed to further investigate the results of traditional infrared reflectography and x-ray radiography. Fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy (FORS) was also used at numerous sites to assist with pigment identification. Macro-X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF) mapping showed evidence of that landscape, as well as an earlier version of the crouching woman painted by Picasso, located between the landscape and the visible surface layer. That pentimento—a prior element that was painted over and revised—reveals changes Picasso made to her hands and body shape, showing aspects of his painting process.

The MA-XRF mapping indicated preliminary information about the spatial distribution of pigments on both hidden and visible compositions. This information guided the micro-invasive sampling of micro-fragments to allow the identification of the different pigments present in the complex stratigraphy of the painting. Scanning Electron Microscopy, Fourier Transform spectroscopies and 2D micro X-Ray Powder diffraction provided further insights into the pigments, binders, and other substances in Picasso’s early palette. 

Publications:

Pouyet, E., K. Brummel, S. Webster-Cook, J. Delaney, C. Dejoie, G. Pastorelli, M. Walton. 2020. "New insights in Pablo Picasso's La Miséreuse accroupie (Barcelona, 1902) using X-ray fluorescence imaging and reflectance spectroscopies combined with micro-analyses of samples." SN Applied Sciences 2 (8): 1-6.