Experts are researching who this man might be and why Picasso painted him. [Photo/IC]

Conservators long suspected there might be something under the surface of "The Blue Room", which has been part of The

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Picasso's etchings on display

Phillips Collection in Washington since 1927. Brushstrokes on the piece clearly don't match the composition that depicts a woman bathing in Picasso's studio. A conservator noted the odd brushstrokes in a 1954 letter, but it wasn't until the 1990s that an x-ray of the painting first revealed a fuzzy image of something under the picture. It wasn't clear, though, that it was a portrait.

"When he had an idea, you know, he just had to get it down and realize it," curator Susan Behrends Frank told the AP, revealing Picasso had hurriedly painted over another complete picture. "He could not afford to acquire new canvasses every time he had an idea that he wanted to pursue. He worked sometimes on cardboard because canvass was so much more expensive."

Scholars are researching who this man might be and why Picasso painted him. They have ruled out the possibility that it was a self-portrait. One possible figure is the Paris art dealer Ambrose Villard who hosted Picasso's first show in 1901. But there's no documentation and no clues left on the canvass, so the research continues.

Favero has been collaborating with other experts to scan the painting with multi-spectral imaging technology and x-ray fluorescence intensity mapping to try to identify and map the colors of the hidden painting. They would like to recreate a digital image approximating the colors Picasso used.