The Portuguese

Braque dissolved a guitar player into a haze of brown facets, then stencilled the letters “D BAL” across the top, and printed type walked into painting for good.

1. 1
   Stencilled letters

   Across the top, in crisp block capitals, the letters “D BAL” (from GRAND BAL, a dance-hall poster) and below them a scatter of stencilled numbers. They are stencilled, sharp, flat, mechanical, and they sit dead on the surface, refusing to join the faceted haze behind them. This is the move the whole picture is famous for.
2. 2
   The musician’s head

   Below the lettering, a rounded mass of paler planes is the player’s head and shoulders, tipped slightly, almost lost in the shimmer. Braque gives you just enough, a curve, a shadow, to feel a person is there before he dissolves again.
3. 3
   The guitar

   Lower center, the diagonal strings and the soft curve of a sound-hole give away the guitar across the musician’s lap. It is the firmest representational object in the picture, the thing that tells you this is a seated player and not pure abstraction.
4. 4
   Planes that bleed

   Everywhere, edges that should belong to the figure open and leak into the background, so body and air are built from the same broken brown light, the Analytic-Cubism trick called passage, here pushed nearly to the point of vapour.