This 1958 linocut by Pablo Picasso, Buste de Femme d’après Cranach le Jeune (Bloch 859), exemplifies his late-career exploration of historical reinterpretation through modernist language. Based on a Renaissance portrait by Lucas Cranach the Younger, Picasso reimagines the stately figure of a woman through the bold, graphic vocabulary of Cubism and the technical innovations of linocut. The result is a fusion of past and present, where tradition meets radical reinvention.

By the mid-to-late 1950s, Picasso had transformed the linocut medium into one of his most expressive vehicles. Initially considered a relatively modest technique, linocut became under his hand a means to achieve painterly richness and monumental force. Working closely with the printer Hidalgo Arnéra in Vallauris, Picasso pioneered the reduction method of linocut, cutting and re-cutting a single block for successive layers of color.

In Buste de Femme d’après Cranach le Jeune, this process allows him to construct vibrant contrasts: flat black areas set against bold passages of turquoise, gold, and red. The layering of colors creates both depth and a sense of sculptural solidity, while the linear carving reinforces the sharp geometry of the composition. The medium itself mirrors the Cubist principles of reduction and construction, where forms are broken down into planes yet unified into a cohesive image.

The portrait depicts a richly adorned woman, seated in profile yet presented frontally, her body and garments stylized into bold graphic elements. Her jewelry and costume, which in Cranach’s original painting were symbols of wealth and virtue, are here reinterpreted as rhythmic patterns, flattening ornament into design. The face, divided into contrasting planes, bears the unmistakable stamp of Cubism: features are fractured, shown simultaneously from different angles, and reassembled into an abstracted but legible whole.

The hands, clasped at the center, anchor the figure with a sense of stability, while the swirling linear patterns of sleeves and necklaces create movement and vitality. The juxtaposition of solid black backgrounds with intricate carved textures dramatizes the figure, transforming the Renaissance model into a modern icon.

What is remarkable about this work is how Picasso returns to Cubist strategies decades after their invention, integrating them into a dialogue with the Old Masters. Whereas early Cubism (with Braque) had fractured still lifes and figures to explore perspective and perception, here Cubism becomes a lens for historical reinterpretation. By subjecting Cranach’s woman to Cubist fragmentation, Picasso strips away the Renaissance illusionism of space and replaces it with the flat, rhythmic interplay of planes.

This merging of Cubism with historical portraiture highlights Picasso’s belief that modern art was not a break with tradition but a continuation and renewal of it. Just as he had earlier reinterpreted Velázquez’s Las Meninas or Delacroix’s Women of Algiers, here he reworks Cranach to show how modern form can revitalize old subject matter.

This print demonstrates Picasso’s extraordinary technical confidence in linocut. Each color layer is precisely cut and registered, yet retains the bold, handmade quality of direct carving. The process of reduction linocut required Picasso to commit fully at each stage—once a layer was cut away, it could not be restored. This sense of risk and decisiveness lends the work its energy and directness.

Whereas his etchings with Dora Maar (Buste de Femme, 1938) emphasized density and psychological intensity, and his lithographs of Jacqueline (Buste de Femme au Corsage Blanc, 1957) pursued intimacy and tonal subtlety, here in linocut Picasso creates monumentality through graphic power, echoing the scale and grandeur of Renaissance portraiture while transforming it into something radically new.

Buste de Femme d’après Cranach le Jeune (Bloch 859) stands as a brilliant synthesis of Picasso’s modernist vision and his reverence for art history. By bringing Cubist fragmentation into dialogue with Cranach’s Renaissance elegance, he bridges centuries of artistic practice. At the same time, his command of linocut demonstrates his restless innovation, transforming a once-humble medium into one capable of rivaling painting in color, scale, and impact.

The work encapsulates Picasso’s lifelong project: to look backward and forward at once, reinventing tradition through the radical clarity of modern form.