Eureka! After twenty-three years of trying and failing to convince art scholars and art critics of hidden images in Picasso’s Guernica, I have stumbled onto what I consider proof of the hidden swan Cygnus (my pages 9, 10, 40), proof of the disguised wings of Pegasus (my pages 1, 2) , proof of hidden Hitler (my pages 22, 23, 24, 52), proof of Hitler as Cyclops (my page 89) and proof of hidden Goering (my pages 22, 23, 24). Importantly, these hidden images are all at center in Guernica.

Please look at Michelangelo’s sketch The Fall of Phaeton. He did several sketches of Phaeton falling and at least two copies of the varying sketches are on the internet. The sketch to which I refer is the sketch where the “river god” is reclining in the left foreground. This Michelangelo sketch may also be seen on page 196 and explained on page 197 of The Essential Michelangelo, by Kirsten Bradbury, published 2000. I first became aware of this sketch on December 20, 2003. I was startled! My jaw dropped and then came a quiet sense of knowing! Here was a Michelangelo sketch standing in direct support of the Guernica hidden images I had discovered nearly twenty-three years ago, that is, in 1981..

To remove any lingering doubt, let us match things in Guernica against things in Michelangelo’s sketch:

The large oval light with filament in Guernica comes from Zeus in the sketch. Scholars have suggested that Guernica’s large oval light is God’s eye in one role, for example, William Darr, “Images of Eros and Thanatos in Picasso’s Guernica”, Art Journal XXV/4. Summer 1966, p. 343: “The blazing sun is on one level God Almighty…”. Also see my pages 5, and 11, where I equated the large oval light with “Ra”, and with “God”. This comparison of Guernica with Michelangelo’s sketch strongly suggests, if not proves, that the large oval light of Guernica is the sketch’s Zeus metamorphosed.

The agonizing bird between the heads of the horse and bull in Guernica originates from the bird that Zeus is astride in the sketch.

The horse in Guernica is Pegasus with two disguised, but not hidden, wings (my pages 1, 2). The sketch has four flying horses with no wings. The four do fly as they pull the sun across the sky each day. Picasso equipped his Guernica horse with disguised wings. The wings are really not that hard to read. They are different and both are synthetic cubist adaptations. They are different because they serve a number of other roles in the mural besides serving as Pegasus’s wings. Several scholars mention that Pegasus appears in preliminary drawings but no scholar has stated that winged Pegasus appears in the final mural.

The spear in the horse in Guernica comes from the thunderbolt that Zeus wields in the sketch.

The speared Hitler-Goering hidden caricature (my pages 22, 23, 24) at center in Guernica comes from the sketch’s falling Phaeton. Hitler and Goering share the same spear-shaft nose. The spear-shaft in Guernica evokes the long wooden liar’s nose of Pinocchio (my pages 32, 33). Both Hitler’s Germany and Goering denied their airplanes had bombed Guernica.

The hidden wheel of Ixion (my page 51) is intuited at center of Guernica. Ixion’s wheel in Guernica is inferred from the wheeled cart at the center of the sketch. Picasso shows a wheeled cart in a Guernica preliminary drawing. Thus, Guernica’s Hitler-Goering caricature eternally spins on Ixion’s wheel in Tartarus, the Greek mythological underworld or Hell. They spin eternally as punishment for murder.

The three women with upturned faces in Guernica come from the three sisters of Phaeton in the sketch. One of the three Guernica women with upturned faces, the one on the right, is burning. Her torso and legs seem to have changed into a burning log with protruding toes (my page 7). In Michelangelo’s sketch all three women are Phaeton’s sisters and Zeus is changing them into trees.

The hidden swan Cygnus (my pages 3, 9, 10, 40) appears in the large white central space in Guernica. The swan Cygnus appears just behind the three women in the sketch.

The head and two arms at the bottom of Guernica come primarily from the man reclining at the bottom-left in the sketch. I identified this severed Guernica head with severed arms in one role as Aquarius, a water carrier with a spilled cup (my pages 40, 41). In the sketch the reclining man is identified as “the river god Eridamius” and his vase is on its side spilling water.

One must remember that all the figures in Guernica have multiple roles stemming from various sources. But much at center in Guernica is primarily metamorphosed from Michelangelo’s sketch The Fall of Phaeton.

In summary, all of Michelangelo’s sketch found its way into Guernica metamorphosed by Picasso.

Einstein built mental speed-of-light models to understand relativity, Watson and Crick built DNA models to solve cell replication, and Picasso’s Guernica results from similar model building. Picasso’s model building began with the scaffolds of cubism and ended with his creation of Guernica. In Guernica Picasso metamorphosed and intertwined many masterworks with stories from religion, mythology and puppet theater. The inextricable screaming glue which holds this almost unbelievably complex masterpiece together is the April 1937 horror experienced by those at Guernica

Melvin E. Becraft, author, date and © March 9, 2004

e-mail: mbecraft34@aol.com or mbecraft24@yahoo.com