Monday, August 17, 2015

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horizontal line cutting across this leg are a dark green shape next to the right thigh of Christ. Parallel line at the top left of the study flipped the light rays seen in the El Greco. Folds in the gown of the angel in blue between her arm and the face of the angel in mauve and green supplied the tilt of the breasts in the top left figure in the study.

The nearly spring studies prove that El Greco's influence was there from the start and not a latecomer as has ben reported in most research of the painting. See how the hand holding back the drapery changes to an awkward position jutting out of the head on the left figure. This occurs in the clasped hands of the angel on the top left of El Greco's "Holy Trinity," (42A) as they seem to grow out of the back of the head of the angel in mauve and green. Picasso, still working with seven figures, moved the nude with raised arms to the center which echoed the Holy Spirit in the El Greco. Since Picasso saw a similarity in the white robes of God the Father compared to his squatting nude on the right, he moved the head forward and added the sharp pointed buttocks which he saw in the folds. This was a shift from the rounded forms of Titian's figure which formerly occupied this area.
Picasso included six figures in his "Study for Les Demoiselles" (50) also called interestingly "Baigneuses dans la Foret (a reference to "Diana and Actaeon?) The crossed leg of the seated figure of earlier studies in this series has been replaced with the nude with the slope to the legs, aview that appears to be from an elevated position. The cloth on the right leg of Diana and the loin cloth hanging from the left hip of Christ were combined to form a cylindrical vase -- or is it a candle? The diagonal line was suggested by the cloth covering part of Diana's leg. A sliver of blue sky in "Diana and Actaeon" shaped the space for the nude with raised arms in Picasso's study.


A limited sketch "Study of Seven Persons, Five Females, a Medical Student and a Sailor (51), shows Picasso's effort to combine the El Greco and Titian influences. Picasso included the angel for the figure on the left but still looked to Titian for the grouping on the right. The maidservant in "Diana and Actaeon" supplied the curves for Picasso's figure in the lower right. Four lines represent the trees / drapery, and the elliptical group in the center was truncated by the water line as observed in the "Diana and Actaeon" as Picasso placed a trapezoid

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