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.