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occurring in the bathers of Cezanne, the facets without any space between them, the solidity of the ground, the sharing of contours and the bas-relief representation of the figures had been discovered in the close interaction of the figures in El Greco's "Holy Trinity" (42A). Various shapes are repeated by Picasso and the cloth draped over the leg is common to both paintings. His raids on the masters had worked. Picasso was ready to explore and he and Braque would soon work together to create Cubism.

"Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" marked a turning point in the history of art. Since the Renaissance, artists had been concerned with the representation of objects in an illusory space. Their solution to this problem was to paint a flat canvas or panel so as to make it look like it had a third dimension. The surface was essentially smooth to support this illusion of depth, and a natural and usually consistent lighting was employed to heighten the effect of actual objects existing in a space organized by principles of perspective used by artists since the fifteenth century. Picasso rejected this distinction between figures and background space when he placed equal importance on the shape of the figures and the shapes surrounding the figures. The women of "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon” confront us from a shallow depth. Planes slide into adjacent planes. Flat colors replace the volumes which would have been created by light and shadow modeling. Picasso told Gomez de la Serna "I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them. (Picasso qtd. in de la Serna 484).

Picasso and Braque first met in 1907. When Braque saw "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" for the first time, he had difficulty accepting it as did many of Picasso's colleague, yet he recognized that it was a revolutionary work. Braque said "but in spite of your explanations you paint as if you wanted to force us to eat rope or drink paraffin." (Olivier 97, 98). Initially, he followed Picasso's lead. His "Nu" of 1907-08 reveals this influence. After "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" Picasso's relationship with Fernande was ending. Gedo says as Fernande moved to the background of his life, "...the foreground occupied by Braque, their explorations and their intimacy. Fernande, who had mistrusted Braque from the beginning, now saw him clearly as a rival. Picasso's passion was being channeled into his work with Braque, and Fernande's role in his life had become, as Gertrude Stein observed, more material than sexual. Picasso would later say, "Braque is the woman who has loved me the most." (Gedo 84).

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