Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, oeuvres de 1965 a 1967, vol. XXV, Paris, 1972, no. 302, illustrated p. 134
The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. The Sixties II, San Francisco, 2002ꦅ, no. 67-126, illustra🌳ted p. 305

Gert Schiff writes, "In December 1966 an army of seventeenth-century soldiers invaded Picasso's pictorial world.  These - soldiers of fortune, soldier-adventurers, Spaniards of the Golden Age - he referred to colloquially as 'musketeers' " (Gert Schiff, Picasso, Late Years, 1963-1973, New York, p. 30).  The appearance of the musketeer refers back to the artist's Spanish roots as well as to an affirmity with Velázquez, Rembrandt as well Zurbarán, painters who influenced him greatly.  Kirk Varnedoe writes, "Jacqueline felt that all the swashbuckling 'musketeer' types that frequent Picasso's later work ultimately began in his fascination for the seventeenth-century world of The Night Watch, and Richardson also has noted how often Picasso would add a swift little 'portrait' of a Rembrandt-like face to his signature when dedicating a book to a friend" (Kirk Varnedoe, Picasso and Portraiture, New York, 1996, pp. 163 and 165). 

The present work can thus be seen as a type of self-portrait.  Picasso frames his renewed self-examination in terms of Rembrandt's own continued analysis of the self-portrait.  The aging artist allows himself a rebirth in the swashbuckling figure of Rembrandt's musketeer.  And yet this grand portrait is clearly a mask, pressed to the surface,꧋ with the left ear and left side of the head on the same plane as the face.  Picasso self-consciously adopts the image of the musk🌄eteer as a mask, a surface which hides as much as it reveals.

Fig. 1  Diego Velázquez, Portrait of a Man with a Goatee (Francisco Pacheco?)𒀰, circa 1620-22, oil on canvas, Madrid, Mu♐seo del Prado

Fig. 2 Rembrandt van Rijn, Rembrandt and Saskia in the Scene of the Prodigal Son in the Brothel, circa 1636, oil on canvas, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie.