Picasso's best known alter ego is the Harlequin, a mysterious character with classical origins who has long been associated with the god Mercury and with Alchemy and the Underworld.Harlequin's traditional capacities to become invisible and to travel to any part of the world and to take on other forms were said to have been gifts bestowed on him by Mercury. It was also said that the secrets of Alchemy were to be found concealed within the Harlequinade.
Harlequin is also a established character of Punch and Judy theatre who in his local forms of 'Christoforo' and 'Pulchinelli', was a popular feature of Barcelona street life at the turn of century.
Picasso undoubtedly saw many such performances at this time, he even assisted in some of Pére Romeu's puppet shows at Els Quatre Ghats and he would have also seen re-enactments of Harlequin's triumph over Death in Barcelona's annual street carnivals.
Wine was one of Harlequin's traditional accoutrements which he often used to seduce women, occasionally Picasso's Harlequin appears to do the same thing as is alluded to in his famous painting 'Au Lapin Agile', 1905.
Picasso's harlequin also appears as the father of an infant or yearning for paternity, this is strongly associated with the traditional Harlequin and his ability to breast feed his own children which in turn is an allusion to his status as an androgyne.
Picasso also symbolically links Harlequin's wine with pregnancy as alluded to in the 1905 drawing 'Circus Artist and Child,'depicting a mother breast feeding her child with a wine bottle at her feet which has been adapted with a teat to become a baby's feeding bottle.
In the Three Dancers and the 1934 drawing there is a further and quite astonishing cryptic interlinking of this wine and pregnancy symbolism.
Picasso also concealed a number of Harlequins in his most famous painting Guernica. These hidden Harlequins appear to be magically undermining the forces of death in the painting, which is reminiscent of Harlequin's traditional triumph over Death in the Barcelona carnival.
