PABLO PICASSO’S 1901 masterpiece “The Blue Room” has a mystery portrait of an unknown man hidden under its surface, experts have claimed.

    Using infrared technology, experts at The Phillips Collection in Washington discovered a portrait of a bearded man wearing a jacket and a bow tie, his face resting on his hand, with three rings on his fingers.

    Curators and conservators there have been working with a team of experts from the National Gallery of Art, Cornell University and the Winterthur Museum in Delaware to analyze the painting and try to identify the mystery man in the work.

    “This painting ‘The Blue Room’ is very important in (Picasso’s) early work. It’s considered an early Blue Period painting,” Patricia Favero, associate conservator at the Phillips, said of the period early in the artist’s career when he produced often melancholy, mostly monochromatic paintings in shades of blue. “To find this painting underneath — which we think was painted in the same year, just earlier in the year and it’s completely different in style — it gives us some insight into Picasso’s development over the course of that year.”

    Picasso’s Blue Period was an experimental time during which the young artist was trying to figure out his style, Favero explained. Understanding more about the work that lies underneath this famed masterwork and others will help art historians learn more about Picasso’s development as a young artist.

    “It just gives us a whole other body of work to look at,” she said.

    “The Blue Room” has been part of The Phillips Collection since 1927. For decades, experts have wondered whether the painting might hide another work. A 1954 letter from a conservator working with Duncan Phillips, the Pittsburgh businessman and Civil War veteran who founded the museum, noted a difference in the texture of the paint and his suspicion that there might be a painting underneath.

    Technology played a key role in uncovering the hidden portrait. When the painting was loaned to The National Gallery of Art in the 1990s, the gallery X-rayed the painting, revealing an image underneath.

    It wasn’t until 2008, when more advanced infrared technology was available, that the Phillips was able to take a clearer picture, revealing the bearded mystery man.

    (SD-Agencies)