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Hidden Portrait of Miró’s Mother Discovered Beneath Iconic Painting
Barcelona, Spain – A century-old mystery surrounding a Joan Miró painting has been unveiled through meticulous scientific analysis. Beneath the cobalt-blue surface of Pintura (Painting), a key work by the renowned Spanish artist, experts have discovered a hidden portrait of Miró’s mother, Dolors Ferrà i Oromí. This remarkable art discovery, achieved through techniques including X-rays and hyperspectral imaging, sheds new light on Miró’s early artistic development and his relationship with his family.
The Enigmatic Pintura and Miró’s Artistic Evolution
Between 1925 and 1927, during a formative period in his career, Joan Miró created Pintura, a small oil-on-canvas piece. He gifted this work to his close friend and art promoter, Joan Prats.
By this time, Miró had already embarked on his pivotal artistic journey to Paris and experimented with various art movements, including Fauvism, Post-Expressionism, and Cubism. These explorations led him to disappoint his parents’ aspirations for a conventional career as an accounts clerk, and instead, he developed a distinctive and more liberated artistic style.
Unveiling the Hidden Image: Scientific Investigation
Marko Daniel, director of the Fundació Joan Miró, notes that Pintura exemplifies Miró’s dedication to “challenging the conventions of painting and artistic representation.” However, the painting now appears to hold a concealed, deeper significance, potentially reflecting Miró’s attempt to break free from the bourgeois constraints of his upbringing as he embarked on his celebrated mission to “assassinate painting.”
Five years after Prats’ death in 1970, Pintura became part of the collection at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona. Over time, the canvas experienced minor cracks and deterioration due to age and humidity.
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About a year ago, conservation experts at the foundation, led by Elisabet Serrat, head of preventive conservation and restoration, decided to re-examine Pintura. Previous X-ray imaging had hinted at underlying layers beneath Miró’s brushstrokes, corroborated by the edges of the painting which revealed older, darker colors beneath the blue top layer.
Advanced Imaging Techniques
Utilizing a range of advanced imaging technologies—including X-rays, ultraviolet and infrared light, hyperspectral imaging, visible raking light, and transmitted light—Serrat’s team, in collaboration with researchers from institutions such as the Centre de Restauració de Béns Mobles de Catalunya and the Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville, uncovered the hidden portrait. The image depicted a formally dressed, middle-aged woman, executed in a style drastically different from Miró’s signature aesthetic.
The researchers quickly recognized that the woman’s earrings and brooch corresponded to three raised paint markings previously observed on the surface of Pintura.
“We then had a high-quality image of the portrait, almost like a photograph,” explained Serrat. “However, the identity of the sitter remained unknown.”
The Identification: A Portrait of Dolors Ferrà i Oromí
Unable to identify the woman in Barcelona, Serrat traveled to Tarragona to visit the Fundació Mas Miró, located in the farmhouse where Miró and his family spent their summers.
“None of the portraits there matched,” she recounted. “The foundation director suggested the portrait might be in Mallorca, where Miró also lived and worked.”
This clue proved fruitful. At Miró’s Son Boter studio in Mallorca, Serrat discovered a 1907 portrait signed by the artist Cristòfol Montserrat Jorba. The face in this portrait not only matched the hidden figure revealed in the Pintura X-rays, but the subject was identified as Dolors Ferrà i Oromí—Joan Miró’s mother.
“The Mallorca portrait is virtually identical, except for minor variations in the dress and earrings; there is no doubt it is the same face,” Serrat confirmed.
Such discoveries are exceedingly rare in art history. Uncovering the face of Dolors Ferrà i Oromí, Serrat remarked, was “a truly delightful surprise.”
Miró’s Intentions: Rebellion and Respect?
Serrat’s team posits that Miró trimmed another version of Montserrat’s portrait—Pintura is notably small, measuring just 49cm x 60cm—and rotated it from a portrait orientation to a landscape one. Intriguingly, he deliberately preserved the central portion featuring his mother’s face.
This revelation prompts the question: what was Miró’s motivation?
Serrat and Daniel interpret Miró’s action as a conscious decision, a precursor to his later overpainting technique applied to his own earlier works in the 1950s. Miró also employed overpainting on kitsch, low-quality artworks in his later years, purposefully altering what he considered inferior and tasteless art.
“However, this new finding is neither Situationist nor revisionist overpainting,” Daniel clarified.
“It represents an act of rebellion. While Miró was already 32 when he began Pintura, making it unlikely a youthful act of defiance against his parents directly, it likely expressed a broader rebellion against the bourgeois world his parents represented—their middle-class aspirations for social advancement.”
Daniel believes Miró’s choice of the Montserrat portrait was deliberate: “There was no artistic necessity to paint over that particular canvas; unlike artists facing material scarcity, Miró had resources. For him, this was undoubtedly a deliberate act of choice.”
Affection Amidst Artistic Defiance
Yet, according to Serrat, Miró’s unconventional action also suggests a degree of affection.
“He could have selected any portrait,” she observed. “Instead, he chose this one, and by keeping his mother’s face intact, he shows a certain respect.”
She also pointed out that Miró left the raised paint marks—the indicators of his mother’s jewelry—undisturbed, when he could easily have removed them.
The expert findings, which Daniel playfully calls “CSI: Miró,” are detailed in a new exhibition, Under the Layers of Miró: A Scientific Investigation, and in a related documentary film, El Secret de Miró. The exhibition at the foundation’s Barcelona venue allows visitors to view both Pintura and Montserrat’s portrait of Dolors Ferrà i Oromí.
Almost a century after the brilliant blue paint dried on Miró’s intriguing painting, Daniel believes we are now beginning to understand the artist’s intentions.
“In some ways, Miró provided clear clues—especially the brooch, which is quite three-dimensional and visible under raking light,” he noted. “He left these clues, as if thinking, ‘Why did it take you so long to figure this out? A hundred years later, you’ve finally worked out what I did!’”