Even towards the end of his life, Picasso continued to push himself. Only at the age of 77 did he create his first linocuts. The Bust of a Woman, after Cranach the Younger (1958) was Picasso’s first color linocut. The process of creating linocuts (prints created from cutting and pressing a piece of linoleum) is a time-consuming process; each color requires a different block. Registering each block correctly is incredibly difficult with misalignments often occurring. With the assistance and knowledge of Hidalgo Arnera, Picasso and Arnera created a new method for creating multicolor linocut prints that utilized only one block which minimized misalignments. However, this meant that after each successive printing, they could not backtrack. Although Cranach does not use this method, it was a pivotal work that showed the complexity with which Picasso worked.

Going beyond the technique of printmaking, Cranach is a prime example of Picasso’s fondness to re-interpret works by Old Master painters. In a sense, Picasso was like a composer creating variations on a theme – think Paul Hindemith composing Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber. By re-interpreting works, Picasso presents his own vision of the themes by Old Masters while also putting himself in dialogue with their works. These conversations deconstruct and reconstruct ideas of influence and the act of painting itself. The most important of these re-interpretations is Picasso’s Las Meninas which remixes Diego Velázquez’s work in the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid. The series was begun in 1957, the year before Cranach. Other artists including Richard Hamilton even re-imagine Picasso’s own interpretation of Las Meninas.