Some Early Celestina Drawings by Picasso

Abstract

A few drawings of Celestina are presented from Picasso’s early oeuvre. Francisco Rico carefully examined Picasso’s early education in Corunna and the books the artist kept from these years. Celestina was not mentioned in any of his texts as Rico explained the banning of certain books in late nineteenth-century Spain obviously leads to the delight in reading them. Rico pointed out, however, the importance of La Tragicomedia and the protagonist were known even by the uneducated thanks to popular culture. The artist certainly would have been familiar with the character of the old madam. As an eighteen-year-old learning in the Prado, Picasso made a copy of Celestina from one of Goya’s Los Caprichos. In another early drawing, The Divan, Picasso placed her standing in a contemporary Barcelona brothel. At age 3, in his famed Blue Period portrait, La Celestina, she appeared blind in one eye. Picasso wrote his own fiction as, in these later works, he deviated from the literary tradition in regard to her locale, appearance, and props. A new interpretation of his Rose Period painting, The Harem, in which supposedly the archetypal Spanish procuress appeared, is identified not as Celestina but rather a public bathhouse attendant.