A landscape with views of Barcelona has been found underneath Pablo Picasso's masterpiece La Misereuse Accroupie (the Crouching Beggar), according to media reports.
Using state-of-the-art non-invasive imaging techniques, scientists managed to discover the hidden landscape created by an unknown Catalan student.
"[Picasso] used the landscape as inspiration for the shape of the woman. The hills that were painted in the background become the contours of her back," Marc Walton, a research professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, said referring to a woman depicted on the canvass of the great Spanish painter.
Curators of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Canada, where the painting currently hangs, decided to scan the masterpiece with the help of sophisticated x-rays after they noticed unusual textures of the Crouching Beggar.
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Referring to x-ray fluorescence, Francesca Casadio from the Centre for Scientific Studies in the Arts in Chicago told the BBC that "many more paintings are waiting to tell their secrets and with our scanning system we can help them talk to us more.
