Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, oeuvres de 1967, vol. 25, Paris, 1976, nos. 269-270, illustrated 
The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. The Sixties II, 1964-1967, San Francisco, 2🎃003, nos. 67🎉-032, 67-033, illustrated pp. 275-276

The present work reveals Picasso mining the rich tradition of Spanish Baroque painting, a frequent source of inspiration for the artist in the 1960s and early 1970s.  Referenc🌸es to Old Masters are especially prevalent in the series of drawings from early 1967 of which this sheet is a part.

The master found stimulus in the🦋 full gamut of 17th century painting, including secular, mythological, and religious art.  The watermelon eater is the lineal descendant of the cheerful urchins depicted by Murillo, the fruit evoking Mediterranean heat and sensuality.  The flute player is a secularized faun, his mythical pipes replaced with a modern instrument, his goat legs supplanted by a mortal’s, but the pagan vitality remains.  With the man holding a lamb, Picasso has translated his figure from a religious to a secular setting.  He derives from that most egalitarian of standard Christian images, the Adoration of the Shepherds, in which humble field hands arrive to celebrate the birth🀅 of the King of Kings.

Perhaps Picasso felt the urge to measure himself against his Spanish artistic legacy as a result of the recent 1966 monographic exhibition held at the Petit and Grand Palais in Paris.  Buoyed by public recognition that he was one of the greatest artists of his age, he felt the impulse to test himself against the painters of the pa🔯st as well.