HX04 Behind bars: Picasso, prostitutes, and the syphilis that bound him

Br J Dermatol. 2025 Jun 27;193(Supplement_1):ljaf085.467. doi: 10.1093/bjd/ljaf085.467.

ABSTRACT

At the turn of the 20th century, a mass hysteria over syphilis exploded throughout Europe. It began in France, where Dr Alfred Fournier discovered that syphilis was heritable. Sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis had assumed prevalence among the thousands of French women who were professional prostitutes. These women became the natural targets for ‘syphilophobia’ campaigns aiming to quell the disease. In 1804, Napoleon passed a law legally permitting prostitution. Women had to abide by strict codes of conduct and undergo fortnightly inspections, and could be imprisoned if infected. Little is known about the individual identities of these prostitutes; many of them often died soon after infection, as syphilis could not be prevented or cured. Historically, moulages and photographs were the predominant forms of image making in hospitals that treated prostitutes. Thus, only specific cutaneous manifestations of syphilis were memorialized. Beyond medical sciences, the historical record is not devoid of the personal impact of the disease. In the spring of 1901, Pablo Picasso extended his stay in Paris, delaying his return to Barcelona, distraught after the suicide of a good friend and fellow Spanish artist. Thus began Picasso’s ‘Blue Period’. For the next 3 years, he explored sorrow and human suffering with a muted, dark palette. Picasso leveraged his friendship with Dr Louis Jullien to gain an unprecedented glimpse inside Paris’s Saint-Lazare Women’s Prison. He visited multiple times under a fake alias. He was particularly affected by the women-wing housing detainees with venereal diseases. Picasso’s works inspired by these visits may not have the same medical precision as contemporaneous images in other media, although these are still historically valuable. In Mother and Child by Fountain, Picasso depicts the mother wearing a Phrygian cap – an item used to distinguish prostitutes from other prisoners. Additionally, the depiction of the child reflects the prison’s policy of allowing mothers to keep their children with them, while the absence of other humans reflects human isolation, as per the law of the time. This work emphasizes a theme not often expressed at the time: an imprisoned syphilitic prostitute enduring profound societal and social isolation. Dermatology can learn much from Picasso’s portrayal of these women suffering alone. Picasso’s Saint-Lazare series may be one of the earliest artistic explorations of the physical and psychological toll of untreated syphilis. Visible skin lesions and disfiguring rashes often characterize this disease.

PMID:41382892 | DOI:10.1093/bjd/ljaf085.467