Another painting under Picasso's "Woman Ironing"

Picasso's "Woman Ironing" was cleaned recently, revealing a clearer picture of an image underneath the painting.

Picasso was just 22 through most of 1904, the year he is thought to have painted “Woman Ironing,” a haunting image in muted tones of blue and gray of a skeletal woman, her eyes hollow, her cheeks sunken, pressing down on an iron with all her might. Money was tight for him. He was living in Paris, and he would often start a painting, abandon it and begin another using the same canvas, a practice he continued throughout his career.

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“Woman Ironing” was given to the Guggenheim Museum by the German dealer and collector Justin K. Thannhauser in 1978 and has since been one of the museum’s most prized possessions. It is the first canvas visitors see as they climb the ramp of the museum’s rotunda to view “Picasso Black and White,” a blockbuster exhibition that opened this month.