¤ PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973) TÊTE D'HOMME OU TÊTE DE MOUSQUETAIRE, 1967 Oil on canvas Dated '10.3.67' on the stretcher Oil on canvas; dated '10.3.67' on the stretcher 45,8 X 38,2 CM - 18 X 15 IN. BIBLIOGRAPHY Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Œuvres de 1965 à 1967, Éditions Cahiers d'art, Paris: 1972, vol. 25, reproduced in black and white under no. 300, pl. 133. A certificate from Monsieur Claude Picasso, dated 10 November 2020, will be given to the buyer. Painted on 10 March 1967, Tête d'homme ou Tête de mousquetaire (Man's head or Musketeer's head) features a delicate palette of greys, ivories and whites rarely seen in Pablo Picasso. One has to go back to paintings such as Olga au col de fourrure (1923) or L'Idylle (1923) to find similar harmonies, which are used here to represent a musketeer. The musketeer appeared in 1966 in Picasso's work, then convalescing in Mougins, and dominated this period to the point of becoming its emblem, supplanting the harlequins and acrobats of earlier years. Inspired as much by Rembrandt and the Spanish Golden Age as by Dumas' and Shakespeare's Three Musketeers, this burlesque character with his long curly hair and curled moustache has all the characteristics of the baroque hero of the Grand Siècle with which Picasso identified in his maturity. Framed tightly and facing the viewer, the model is dressed in a prestigious Spanish costume consisting of an immaculate white collar and a dark suit, the beginnings of which can be seen. A suit that evokes the convalescent's aspirations for gallantry, but also signs Picasso's return to his hispanidad. That of the picaresque novels and Don Quixote. That of the almost monochrome gentlemen of El Greco or Velásquez, whom the Malaga native looked at avidly both to nourish the retrospective experiments of the end of his life and to draw the fantasy portrait of his alter ego in painting. Painted on March 10, 1967, Tête d'homme or Tête de mousquetaire features a delicate palette of grey, ivory, and white that is rarely seen in Pablo Picasso's work. One must turn to previous paintings like Olga au col de fourrure (1923) or L'Idylle (1923) to find similar harmonies, used here to represent a musketeer. The figure of the musketeer appeared in Picasso's work in 1966, while the artist was convalescing in Mougins, and dominates the period to such an extent that it became emblematic, replacing the harlequins and acrobats of the preceding years. Inspired as much by Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Spanish Painting as it was by Dumas's The Three Musketeers and the works of Shakespeare, this burlesque figure with long curly hair and a curving moustache has all the markings of the seventeenth-century Baroque hero with which Picasso identified in his later years. The tightly-framed, full-face portrait depicts the model wearing a magnificent Spanish costume comprised of a gleaming white ruff and the beginnings of a dark frock-a frock suggesting the convalescent's own ambitions, given as he was to romantic escapades, but that also signals Picasso's return to his Hispanidad of Spanish picaresque novels and Don Quixote. A Hispanidad also reflected in Greco and Velásquez's gentlemen; the painter from Malaga gazed hungrily upon their monochromatic figures as much to nourish the retrospective explorations he engaged in at the end of his life as to extract a fantasized portrait of his alter ego in painting.