Goat's Skull, Bottle and Candle

Pablo Picasso, 1952

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About This Work

A goat's skull, a bottle, and a candle are arranged on a table in a traditional vanitas composition — a meditation on mortality. But Picasso's treatment is far from traditional: the objects are rendered in his late Cubist style, with sharp, angular planes and a palette of blacks, whites, and grays that gives the work a somber, nocturnal quality. The candle's flame is the only warm element in an otherwise cold composition.

The vanitas still life — a composition of objects symbolizing the transience of life — was a traditional genre of European painting that Picasso reinvented in his late career. This work, painted during his Vallauris period, reflects his continued engagement with the great themes of Western art.

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