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Conservators at the Guggenheim Museum in New York have uncovered a small dog hidden beneath the surface of a Pablo Picasso painting.
The image of a charming lapdog wearing a red bow was revealed by museum experts during a technical analysis of the Spanish artist’s painting “Le Moulin de la Galette” ahead of an exhibition of his early works.
Opened at the Guggenheim on Friday, the new show “Young Picasso in Paris” comprises 10 paintings and drawings made by Picasso upon his arrival in the French capital in 1900. “Le Moulin de la Galette” depicts a lively scene at the titular venue — a famous Parisian dance hall that was painted by other artists including Pierre-Auguste Renoir. A sea of couples are seen dancing in fine hats, rendered in quick brushwork, with three figures seated at a table in the foreground.
But studies ahead of the show, carried out by the Guggenheim in collaboration with experts from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., revealed a lively fourth guest at the table, covered up by a swath of dark paint.
Conservators were able to generate an image of what the dog originally looked like using X-ray fluorescence, an imaging technique that maps out the chemical elements in a painting, including pigments, according to the Guggenheim’s senior paintings conservator, Julie Barten.
