61

autumn of 1906 was a head seen in El Greco's "Assumption of Mary" 1577, now in the Art Institute of Chicago. A page of studies reveal how Picasso imagined the collar and the palette from areas in the El Greco. Picasso flipped El Greco's "Madonna and Child" ca. 1590, now in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, for the final mask in his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Also, El Greco's "St. Louis, King of France" 1587-97, in the Louvre Museum, supplied the heads for several studies of women with chignons in the winter of 1906. Thus, the work of El Greco figured prominently in the development of the masked faces.

Picasso studied Greek sculptured marble heads and Sumerian heads in the Louvre Museum as this art of the past was relevant to what Picasso was trying to do with the features of the face. A look at Paul Gauguin's "Ovira" 1894-95 (58A) will demonstrate Picasso's interest in the expressive simplification of features whose primitive mask-like features were applied to the faces of many of his studies. For example see Picasso's "Page of Studies" done in the autumn of 1906 (58) and "Two Nudes Holding Hands" of 1906 (58.5), in a private collection. Gauguin's "Teha'Amana" of 1892 and "Stele of Christ" 1894-96 must also have interested Picasso.

His investigations into primitive art predate the time when the Fauve artists were promoting masks from Africa, so Picasso could have sensed some validation of his forward vision of using primitive art as a source of inspiration. It has been documented that Picasso was interested in Iberian sculpture: William Golding says that "in the heads of the two central "demoiselles" the severe, regular ovals of the typically "Iberian" faces of 1906 give way to new, asymmetrical shapes. The jaws and chins are much heavier and the bulging eyes stare out vacantly at the spectator. The ears, previously almost always small and compact, reach fantastically large proportions. (Golding qtd. in Hiltom 11).

Picasso's possession of the two Iberian heads in his studio allowed him ample time to study how their simplified representations of the face might be incorporated into his work. Picasso was intrigued with the prospect of using masks in portraits. His studies showed Picasso that gendered identities could be shifted with masks. Gertrude Stein, a female, took on the mannerisms of a male. He was fascinated by her as attested by the ninety sittings for her portrait which Picasso completed in the autumn of 1906. Picasso's interest in primitive art was

61