Presented in a new exhibition entitled "Picasso: Painting the Blue Period" at DC’s museum The Phillips Collection, these discoveries provide new details on the materials and processes used by the Spanish artist in his early career, as well as how to better conserve his works.

"The technical studies were able to inform art historical research at a new level," indicated Patricia Favero, an associate conservator at the Phillips Collection in Washington, in a statement to Axios.

Ms. Favero is part of a team of conservators and scientists who have studied three of Picasso's works, currently in the exhibition focusing on the artist's blue period.

Earlier studies used imaging techniques to examine aspects of these works and other paintings on recycled canvas, which Picasso was known to use.

The first clue to the existence of a painting under "The Blue Room" (1901) was spotted more than 60 years ago, with some of the texture of the paint reflecting brush strokes in different directions of the composition.

By combining data from X-radiography, infrared (IR) reflectance imaging spectroscopy, and X-ray fluorescence mapping, researchers from the Phillips Collection, the National Gallery of Art, and other institutions were able to identify a portrait of a man, indicators of the brush and strokes, and the pigments used by Picasso, including mercury, which suggests that the artist painted with vermilion.

Microanalysis of very small samples of the paint revealed that most of "The Blue Room" is painted directly onto the portrait, without priming, and that Picasso's palette is darkening.

Using IR reflectance spectroscopy, the researchers were also able to identify shapes under the right shoulder and forearm of the woman in "Crouching Beggarwoman" (1902).

The chemical elements of the paint were mapped using X-ray fluorescence scanning, revealing information about the stages of development of the painting, including an exposed and later covered arm.

While conservators already knew that a landscape painting, whose creator is unknown but whose color scheme is similar to Picasso's, lay beneath the portrait, recent analysis has identified new details about how the hills in the painting later became the crouching woman's back.

A map of the elements in the painting of "The Soup" (1903) suggests that Picasso changed the shape of the bowl offered to a child by a woman and also altered the woman's gesture and the way her hair falls over her forehead.

Other imaging tools revealed that the painting was originally a still life, with parts of it scraped off rather than painted on.

According to Favero "there is still more to learn from some of the world's most studied paintings".

Offering new insight into Pablo Picasso's creative process early in his career, "Picasso: Painting the Blue Period" is the first exhibition in Washington, DC, in 25 years to focus on the early work of this twentieth-century icon.

Presenting works from 30 international collections, this exhibition features over 70 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by the Spanish artist along with works by other European artists that he studied before and during the Blue Period.