Science and Charity

Pablo Picasso completed this large academic work in 1897 when he was just 15 years old. The composition shows a sick woman in bed, attended by a doctor taking her pulse and a nun holding a child and offering a drink. The painting won honorable mention at the National Fine Arts Exhibition in Madrid.

Picasso's father, an art teacher, posed as the doctor in this painting, and the artist hired models for the other figures. The subject of illness and death reflects the loss of Picasso's younger sister Conchita to diphtheria three years earlier. While stylistically conventional, the work demonstrates the notable technical skill Picasso possessed even as a teenager. The painting belongs to the Museu Picasso in Barcelona.