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Lasker Awards and papal portraiture: turning fields upside down

Nature Medicine volume 15, pages 1137–1140 (2009)Cite this article

Picasso has been quoted as saying “my mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become a Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and I became Picasso.” And, indeed, Picasso did become a Picasso. His oeuvre was extraordinary in its creativity and quantity: he produced more than 50,000 works of art, including 2,000 paintings, 1,300 sculptures, 30,000 prints and 8,000 drawings, not to mention thousands of ceramics and hundreds of tapestries and rugs.

Picasso's passion for portraiture was legendary. His subjects included virtually every living creature imaginable: wives, lovers, children, parents, himself, art dealers, artists, musicians, bathers, ballet dancers, midgets, prostitutes, soldiers, sailors, wealthy patrons, dogs, cats, sheep and roosters—but, surprisingly, no popes. At least I've never seen a Picasso picture of a pope, although, in the spirit of full disclosure, I admit that I have not looked at all 50,000 of Picasso's works.

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Figure 1: Papal portraiture, from Raphael to Titian to Velázquez.
Figure 2: Three portrait versions of Pope Innocent X.

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  1. Joseph L. Goldstein is the chair of the Lasker Awards Jury.,

    Joseph L Goldstein

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  1. Joseph L Goldstein
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Correspondence to Joseph L Goldstein.

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Goldstein, J. Lasker Awards and papal portraiture: turning fields upside down. Nat Med 15, 1137–1140 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1009-1137

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