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work from its very beginning and exercised great care in the manner in which the canvas was chosen, stretched, and prepared for painting, doing this work himself. Nearly eight feet square, the painting was unusual in its size as well as its proportional dimensions. Leo Stein recalled "I had some pictures relined, and Picasso decided that he would have one of his pictures too treated like a classic, though in reverse order---he would have the canvas lined first and paint on it afterwards" (Stein 175).

This square format of "Ls Demoiselles d'Avignon" may be seen in Zurbaran's "Funeral of St. Bonaventure (1A). as line moving from the lower left to the mask of the seated figure in "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon repeated the slope of St. Bonaventure The miters and crown on the left of (1A) relate to the raised arms of Picasso's central figures. The direct eye contact with the viewer (almost an hypnotic stare) that Picasso's figures display had an origin in the background figures in (1A). This device continued to be used in several Picasso works after this painting. A detailed study of elements borrowed from Zurbaran was described in detail in the section above on the studies.

El Greco's influence was envisioned as clearly influencing the picture and is often presented as a source. Many of the studies from the early spring until summer definitely show the role that El Greco's work played in the solution of the composition.

In 1965, I presented a comparison of "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" with El Greco's "Agony in the Garden" (40E) in my master's thesis at he University of Iowa School of Art and Art History. (Oakes). A look at "Agony in the Garden" (sometimes referred to as "The Mount of Olives") (40E) reveals how El Greco's space influenced Picasso's development of the dynamics of his composition. He placed his figures on a framework suggested by the El Greco painting. Space was compressed so that the two-dimensionality of the painting was emphasized. The emotional state of Christ on the evening before the Passion was expressed in the way El Greco impacted the composition with light and dark shapes colliding as the sky crashes into the rocks that surround Christ. Picasso utilized several of the major lines that run through the El Greco. The "S" curve, the vertical division of the figures on the left, and the sloping oval "cocoon" shape containing the sleeping disciples were all repeated by Picasso. Frank Rutter tells us that "El

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