Reading the Letter

Two heavy, sculptural young men sit pressed close together, sharing the reading of a letter, their massive limbs and grave faces given the weight of classical statuary. Picasso painted this in his neoclassical period after the First World War, when he turned from Cubism to monumental, sober figures drawn from antiquity. Now in the Musee Picasso in Paris, Reading the Letter is among the most touching of those works - its intimacy and gravity often read as a meditation on friendship, perhaps a quiet homage to his late friend the poet Apollinaire.