The Man with the Lamb

Author(s): Paul M. Laporte

Source: Art Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Spring, 1962), pp. 144-150
Published by: College Art Association
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Paul M. Laporte

THEMAN WITHTHELAMB
Picasso's Monumental Bronze

"I am the being which is in such

a way that in its being its being is
in question."
-Sartre
One aspect of Picasso's greatness is his ability to develop,
change and expand his means of expression while persisting in
the use of significant subject matter. For this very reason there
is a sense of totality and universality in his work lacking in the
necessarily more fragmentary attempts of those who came after
him. In regard to this particular achievement Picasso's work is
comparable to that of Einstein. Just as the great physicist has
created a total world view which stands beside, while at the
same time replacing, that of Newton, so Picasso stands beside
the great masters of the past while he has, at the same time,
launched into an entirely new and strange world. Nothing that
has come after Picasso and Einstein is conceivable without their
achievement, even though the further developments of this century have already carried us a good distance beyond them.
Significant subject matter stands to form in painting in
much the same relation as the words sung by human voices
stand to the music through which they are expressed. In music,
the greatest success is achieved when the verbal and non-verbal
expressions are most intimately supporting and complementing
each other. But what is significant subject matter in painting?
It is significant not for what it is objectively but for what the
artist has made of it. To Cubism, and to Cezanne before, figure
and still life are most often mere pretext; the objects in the
painting are no more than elements of spatial constellations.
But Expressionism, like van Gogh before it, "squeezes" the objects so as to extract their essence, their soul from them.
Picasso in his Cubist and "Classical" phases utilized subjects mostly as a basis for expounding the formal structure of
space. But a number of subjects recur persistently in various periods of Picasso's career. Their very frequency, peculiar to Picasso and to no other artist of the twentieth century, attests to
the significance which must be attached to them. Quite understandably, the motif of the "artist" is among the most frequent
topics of Picasso's work. Rarely before the twentieth century has
the artist become so problematic to himself, has the problem of
creation and creativity aroused so much anxiety. But there are
other subjects in Picasso's work which are peculiarly recurrent.
One of these is the general subject of social concern, as in the
images of poverty and conflagration of the Blue Period, still
present-in undertones-in the jugglers of the Rose Period.
The topic of social concern culminated in Guernica and related
Mr. Laporte has published several articles on contemporary painting and sculpture. Formerly at Olivet College, he is now Professor of Art at Immaculate
Heart College. He also teaches at Otis Art Institute and University of Southern
California.

works. Another frequent subject is that of mother and child,

treated in such differentphases of Picasso'swork as the Blue
Period, the Classical Period, and again in the 'forties and
'fifties. Still anothersubjectis that characterizedby the symbols
of the bull fight. These last two are also incorporatedin Guernica. But the symbolof the bull fight approachesthe largerone
of "sacrifice"and thus includes not only Guernicabut also the
Crucifixion,the Girl with the Cock and others.
In the context of the symbol of sacrifice,Picasso'ssculpture of the Man with the Lamb,of 1942-43 (Figs. la & lb),
assumesa unique position in his life work. It was createdduring those anguishedyearsof the SecondWorld War of which
Churchillwrote that "everyonerealized how near were death
and ruin."' After the war Picasso donated a bronze cast of
this sculptureto the town of Vallauris as a memorialto the
resistancefighters.
The sculptureis pure simplicity,a standing man carrying
an animal. The subject as such has no precedentin Picasso's
work but is in fact as old as the first urban civilizationsof
Mesopotamiaand Egypt. The statue, however, that may first
come to mind in connectionwith Picasso'swork is the Good
Shepherd (Fig. 2), one of the earliest representationsof
Christ, of the third century.Even though the Good Shepherd
carriesthe lamb drapedover his shouldersinstead of in front
of him, as in the Picasso, the similarityof subject is evident.
The Good Shepherdhas, as his most famous antecedent,the
Greek Calf Bearer(Fig. 3) of the sixth centuryB.C. This connection establishesthe original idea of the subjectwhich is of
a man carryingan animal for a sacrificialoffering to the deity.
Among the severalextant Greek statuettesof the same subject
there is at least one in which the animalis not drapedover the
shouldersbut carriedin front, just as in the Picasso. In fact,
during pre-Greektimes the carrying in front seems to have
been at least as frequentas the carryingover the shoulders;but
the subjectwas then treatedonly in relief or painting. This is
very likely more than an accident of preservation.In preGreek art, the animalbeareris one incidentin the more inclusive representationof a ritual procession. In Greek art, the
statue itself is a votive offering by an individual;at this time
the offeringof the animalto the deity seems to have been more
an act of personaldevotion than part of a collectiveritual.
But to understandmore fully Picasso'sparticulartreatment
of the subjectit is necessaryto follow two lines of tradition:
not only the specificrelationbetweenman and animal,but also
the more general evolution of the representationof the upright
male figure in sculpture.The more generalproblemof the upright male figure, as of the humanfigurein general,can be experiencedfrom two differentpoints of view which nevertheless
Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour, Cambridge, 1949,
p. 22.
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144

Fig. lb. Picasso, The Man with the Lamb, final version in plaster.

Fig. la. Picasso, The Man with the Lamb, 1943, bronze, ht. 88" (one cast is
owned by Mr. and Mrs. Sturgis Ingersoll and the Philadelphia Museum of Art;
another is in the square at Vallauris, France; a third is in Picasso's garden).

145

coincide in the end. We can startwith the representationalaspect of the subject and analyse the differentpositions of the
figure; or we can start with the formal aspect and analysethe
different balances and distributionsof weight in the formal
composition.The first, representational,approachcan be made
meaningful only by empathy, that is by our willingness and
ability to reproducein our own bodies the feeling of the distribution of weights and of the directionsof movement connected with a body representedin a given position. This kinetic
assimilationof our body to that of the figurerepresentedcreates
a configurationwhich coincides with the "formal"properties
of the work. Therefore,the distinctionbetweenthe representational and the formal approachappearsin the end as artificial;
it is helpful only because it makes us more actively aware of
our habits of perceptionand appreciation.
The Sumerianmale figure stands completely motionless
and columnlike;it is static and its weight pressesheavily upon
the base. The Egyptianfigure is walking but its forwardmovement is hesitant becauseits weight or vertical axis is over the
leg in the rear.Its glanceis unfocussed,directedinto the far distance. The Greek glance, to the contrary,seems to be focussed
on some object close at hand, almostas if it were focussedupon
the spectator. The Egyptian walking stance is only slightly
modified in the Greek figure, but sufficientlyto give an in-

Laporte: The Man with the Lamb

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Fig. 2. The Good Shepherd. 3rd century. marble,

ca. 48" high, Lateran Museum, Rome.

Fig. 3. The Calf Bearer (Moscophorus), VI C. B.C.

marble, Acropolis Museum, Athens.

creasedsense of virtualaction. The weight of the body is more

evenly distributedbetweenthe two legs so that the Greekfigure
appearsslightly aggressivecomparedwith the passivenessand
hesitancyof the Egyptianfigure.
Earlyin the fifth centuryB.C. the virtualmovementof the
Greek figure begins to be differentiatedin two, explicit directions: on the one hand the representationof relaxation,on the
other hand of action.Fromhere on it is not until Michelangelo,
in the sixteenth century,that a new and even more powerful
sense of action begins to stir in the figure. Both the Greek figures and Michelangelo'sfigures act from within. But once the
Greek figure'saction becomesovert it finds no resistancein the
surroundingspace. Some of Michelangelo'sfigures, however,
seem to be hammeringaway at an envelope of resisting space
even though theyare foreverunableto breakthroughit. By way
of this contrastthe actionin Michelangelo'sfigureshas become
more violent than ever before, more so than the uncheckedviolence of the Hellenistic Laokoon. After Michelangelo, in the
seventeenth century, Bernini once again breaks through the
limiting spaceenvelope.A broad,aggressivestrideis characteristic of Bernini'sDavid as well as of the main figure of the Fontana del Moro. The movementsof these figuresextend invisible
axes into the surroundingspace. But all these movementsare
tamed by countermovementsand accessories;there may be violent torsions, but even the most aggressive gestures are balanced and neutralizedin the end.
Rodin, toward the end of the nineteenth century,is the
firstto represent,in his SaintJohn the Baptist (Fig. 4), a vigorous stridein which head and armmove in the same directionas
the legs; he thus achieves an unbroken forward movement

Fig. 4. Rodin, Saint John the Baptist, bronze, ht.

79", from the cast at the Museum of Modern Art,
N.Y.

which had not been attemptedbefore. It is as if the virtual forwardmovementof the archaicGreek figurewas only now made
actual.But if Rodin'smovementis a vigorousstride, Boccioni's
Forms in Space, of 1912, is violently storming forward. The
greaterabstractnessof its form languagenotwithstanding,it is
this
like a combinationof Rodin and Bernini.Characteristically,
acain
a
a
even
if
same
stance
was
used
great deal,
highly
very
demic idiom, by Nazi-Germanand Russiansculptorssince the
thirties.
If Boccionihas reachedan extreme,Picassoretractedfrom
it and re-introducedthe standingfigure.But with all the sturdy
bulkinessof this figure, its stanceis tentativeand insecureas if
the man did not wholly trust his ability to stand up. The awkward stiffnessof the legs suggests the position of a child who
has not yet fully learned to keep his balance,who has not yet
masteredthe movementsof his body. The precariousnessof this
position,however,is not only expressedby the relationbetween
legs and body but is also connectedwith the awkwardand unruly weight of the animal which is an additionalthreat to the
balanceof the man.
This brings up the second line of developmentwhich is
concernedwith the relationshipbetween the human figure and
the weight carriedby it. Representationsof the ancient Near
Eastwhere the animalis carriedin front show no concernwith
the problemof balance.The act of carryingdoes not call for any
muscularexertion on the part of the man, nor does the animal
show any concernwith its own position. The two figures are
simply added to each other; the relationshipis symbolic and
formal. An intrinsic relationshipbetween man and animal is
createdonly in the Greekfigureof the Calf Bearerwhere man
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146

Fig. 5. Pollaivolo, Hercules and Antaeus, bronze, ca.

15" high, National Museum, Florence.

Fig. 6. Daumier, Ratapc:il, brcsnze, ht. 151/2". Private

collection, courtesy of Los Arigeles County Museum.

and animal adapt to each other in such a way that the act of
carryingbecomesa commonventurefor both. A completelyrelaxed animalis drapedover the shouldersof the man, and thus
causesthe least disturbancein termsof weight and balance.This
is the classicaltype which still appearsin the Good Shepherd.
But one mustnot forget that in termsof the literarymeaningof
this later sculpturea radicalchangehas occurred.The lambcarried by the Good Shepherdis not to be sacrificedto the deity.
On the contrary,it is to be saved and, implicitly,the man carrying the animal has himself turned into the sacrificiallamb: he
saves the lamb by sacrificinghimself.
this radicalreversalof meaning had not
Characteristically,
the slightest effect on the formal representationof the type. It
offeredno meansof being expressedby a differentgesture.Nor
was the problemof carryinga living weight a prominentone,
since that time, with the exceptionof the standingGothic Madonna. Antonio Pollaiuolo'sHerculesand Antaeus of c. 1460
(Fig. 5) is possibly the first work showing the imbalancecreated by a living and resistingweight carriedby a standingfigure; but this imbalanceis neutralizedby the conspicuoussupport of Hercules' club. In Giovanni da Bologna's sixteenth
centuryRape of the Sabine Women, too, the conflictis harmonized by the spiraling verticaltorsion. Mention should be also
made of a drawingby Rembrandtwhich shows a woman holding a child wriggling to free himself. This is an acuteobservation deeply moving because of its uniqueness. While Rembrandt deals with the problem of balance humorously,Daumier, in the nineteenthcentury,treatsit ironically.The imbalanceof his Ratapoil(Fig. 6) has no outwardreason;it is caused
by inebriation,and balanceis barelymaintainedby the prop of
his walking stick.
Only towardthe end of the nineteenthcenturyan obscure
Italian sculptor,AdrianoCecioni,has createdwhat, in termsof
147

Fig. 7. Adriano Cecioni. Boy and Cock, bronze, ca.

life size, Antique and Modern Gallery, Florence.

subject matter, amounts to a humoristicprelude to Picasso's

tragic Man with the Lamb. Cecioni (Fig. 7) probablypicked
up his idea from a Romangroup of a child fighting a gander.
In the Romanpiece, a variantof the child Herculesfightingthe
snakes, child and animal are pitched against each other as
equals in power. In Cecioni, however, the child stands in
arched tenseness, his features distorted with anxiety, desperately holding on to a roosterwho in turn exerts all his powers
in a struggle to free himself from the child's embrace.
Whether or not Picassohas seen this piece is of no great
importance.But it does not seem a mere accidentthat the idea
of a humanstrugglingto hold an unwilling animal,and baffled
by this problemof balance,has come up at this particulartime
of history. In Cecioni it is no more than a superficialand playful variationupon a Roman theme which had alreadylost its
mythologicalroots. With Picasso, an archetypefrom the deep
past re-emerges;at the sametime, this archetypehas undergone
a radicaltransformationwhich points up its acute and specific
significancein the presentcrisis of humanity.
In going throughPicasso'snumeroussketchesfor the Man2
it becomes evident that the artist tried to clarify his mind on
three main levels (Figs. 8, 9, 10, 11). Knowing his particular
method of working, one does not expect a steadyprogression
from the firstsketchto the final solution.Rather,it is a constant
swinging back and forth between possibilities.One of the alternativesconcerhsthe head of the man. The sketchesstartwith
a raggedface, unshavenbut not bearded.Youthful featuresfollow as well as the beardedtype of Zeus, who stood as a symbol
of the creatorin manyof Picasso'sgraphicworks.3In the statue
itself, the youthful type has disappearedand the maturityof
2

Cahiers d'Art, 1945-1946, pp. 84-112.

3 See Paul M.
Laporte, "Picasso's Portrait of the Artist," Centennial Review, 1961, pp. 296-319.

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limit of tolerance.The very iron grip with which the manholds

the animalincreasesthe precariousnessof his situation;his legs
stiffen and the rigidity of his posture contrastsstrangelywith
the elasticityof the writhing animal.
I believe thatin this workthe animalstandsas a symbolfor
"Nature"or the "World."Picasso'sown native heritageof the
animalsymbolappearssurreptitiouslyin the bull and the horse.
It has found its greatest manifestationin Guernicawhere the
inseparablepair is an emblemof the suffering,deathand triumphant revival of all creatures.The bull is unperturbedby the
slaughteraround him, while the horse breaksdown in deadly
agony: reversingthe customaryidea of the bullfight,viewing it
from an unusual perspective,Picasso has extractedan entirely
new and pertinent meaning from the archetype.A similar reversal is evident in the Man with the Lamb.But between 1937
and 1942, betweenGuernicaand the Man, betweenthe Spanish
Civil War and the Second World War, Picasso created two
other importantworks in which man's relationwith the animal
is highly significant. One is the large pastel of The Farmer's
Wife which treatsof man'smaternalcare for nature;the other
is the Girl with the Cock (Fig. 12), a variationof the theme of
sacrifice.In the latter, the cock is fettered like the lamb in the
sculpture,tryingdesperatelyto wiggle itself loose. But the knife
is alreadywaiting for its victim. The girl is a veritablegulping
machine with a huge mouth, an hour-glassneck, dull eyesmuchin contrastto the vivid eyes of the cock-and with a nonexistent forehead pushing against the upper edge of the picture. This girl, in contrastto the man of the sculpture,is entirely unaffectedby the plight of the animal.
To circumscribethe full meaning of the Man with the
Lamb anotherwork must be mentioned, the painting Mother
and Child (Fig. 13), createdin 1943, in the very sameyear as
the Man. This painting is of a child in the processof learning
to walk. The ambiguityof the fear before the unknownand the
eagernessto conquerit is vividly expressedin the jerkymovements and the switching,wide-open eyes of the child. Picasso,
said GertrudeStein, "knowsfaces and the head and the body as
a child knows them.... With the exceptionof African sculpture, no one had ever tried to express things seen not as one
knows them but as they are when one sees them without rememberinghaving looked at them."4
In a large simple arch the mother is bent over the child,
very similarin her maternalcareto the Farmer'sWife. Picasso
himself said of the picture that he had not originally planned
to have the mother in it. And in his cryptic way he added:
"Thus the child has become the father of the mother."5It
would be foolish to suggest that Picassointended an allusionto
the Christwho, as part of the Trinity, is also the father of his
mother;but this meaningseemsto be implicitin his pronouncement and is certainlyin keeping with his general archetypal
understanding.Picassomanipulatesthe archetypesunconsciously
and with completefreshness,extractingfrom them entirelynew
meanings.This whole context also suggeststhe saying of Kierkegaardthat "He who is willing to work gives birth to his own
father."6
In this painting, the child appears as the Prime Mover
Stein, Picasso, 1938, pp. 14-15.
Harriet and Sidney Janis, Picasso 1939-1946, 1946, pl. 105.
6from Fear and
Trembling, Walter Lowrie transl. Princeton,
1952, p. 34, as quoted by Loren C. Eiseley.
4Gertrude

149

Fig. 12. Picasso, Girl

Museum of

Modern

Art, New York. Coil.

MericCallery.

who has not yet masteredthe world and who in order to find
his own balance is in dire need of the pivotal arch of the
mother. In the sculptureof the Man, the child has grown up
into maturity.But the difficultyof maintaininghis balancehas
remainedthe same; while the child's precariousbalance,a result of his inexperience,can be retainedonly with the gentle
help of the mother,the man'sbalanceis threatenedby the very
load he has to carry,a threatwhich puts his whole body under
extreme stress. Both the child and the man are aspects of
Man the Creator,the universalartist,attemptingto face the all
but impossibletask of balancinghimself with Nature. But the
man of the sculptureis also Adam, man in his primeval state,
of whom the Lord in Milton's poem said:
"I madehim just and right,
Sufficientto havestood, thoughfree to fall."7
Sartre,the existentialistphilosopher,gives the same problem a more contemporaryring when he says that man "is condemned to freedom."
An allusion to Adam, the man made of a clod of dirt,
shows also in that the artist left the evidenceof his manipulation of his material.Rodin used this manipulationof surfaces
with lumps of clay more consistentlythan any of his predecessors. But hidden underneathhis surface undulations-which
aim at morevibrantreflectionsof light-there is still a structure
of solid volumes. The much larger lumps of clay used by Picasso, ratherthan merely differentiatingthe surfaces, seem to
indicatethat the artist,in the processof making,has barelyarrived at the surfaceof his sculpture.Formationas an emergence,
a becoming, has itself become an integral part of the work's
meaning.This is not to say that there is no solid volume in the
sculptureof the Man. But it does show that Picasso has used
the characteristic
techniqueof the twentiethcentury,a combination of modelling and carving.This is most evident in the contrast between the columnlike stiffnessof the legs which show
the marksof carving,and the relativelygreaterflexibilityof the
upper parts with more evidence of the piling up of lumps of
clay. The volumes-more of the man than of the animal-are
7 John Milton, Paradise Lost, III, 98-99.

Laporte: The Man with the Lamb

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Fig. 13. Picasso, Mother and

Child, Yale Art Gallery.
Stephen Clark bequest.

primeval and uncouth; they are as "unfinished"as the lumps

of claywhich were left suspendedas in the midst of the process
of making.
I have suggestedthat there is an affinitybetweenthe Man
and the Child who learns to walk in that they both have to find

their balancein a world which they arein the processof making

their own. As Kierkegaardsays: "The uncertaintyof the objective world, embracedand appropriatedby the most passionate
inner nature of man, that is truth, the highest truth there is for

one who exists."8The affinitybetween Man and Child is further borne out by the absenceof sex in the man who otherwise
is extremelyvirile. This too makeshim Adam, the humanbeing
before the creationof woman,the symbolof all men.
It is usuallya thanklesstask to analyzethe "expression"of
a face in a work of art.But the head of the Man is a greatchallenge in this respect. Surely it is a variation on the Skull of
1941. The Man's eyes are no more than two lumps of clay
barelyfused with the sockets.Is he blind? No doubt, the man
is not only terrrifiedby his predicamentbut also by what he
sees, whetherthis be "real"or seen with his inner eye. If he is
blind he is one in a row of mythicalseers and poets who were
blinded by what they saw or would not have been able to see so
sharplyhad they not been deprivedof their bodily eyes.
An iconographicdiscussionof works of art such as is attemptedhere alwaysrunsthe riskof substitutingsubjectmatter
for artistictotality.Yet I would arguewith John Dewey's contention that in a great work of art subjectmatterand form may
become practicallyinterchangeable.9The problem of the precariousbalancebetween man and animal in Picasso'ssculpture
bears referenceat one and the same time to subjectmatterand
form. Moreover,the historicalperspectiveopened by the iconographicaltreatmentof the subjectgives, by its very contrastto
8
As quoted by Robert Heiss in Wesen and Formen der Dialektik from S. Kierkegaard, Abschliessende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift zu den philosophischen Brocken, 1910, vol. I, p. 278. This is
my translation from the German.
9John Dewey, Art as Experience, New York, 1934, p. 109. "In
the act there is no distinction, but perfect integration of manner and
content, form and substance."

Picasso'sunique solution, an additionaldimensionto his sculpture. If we allow the animal to stand as the symbol of nature
then the group standsas the symbolof man'srelationto nature.
This relationhas radicallychangedfrom the Greek Calf Bearer
to Picasso'sMan. An implicit understandingbetweenman and
natureis expressedin the Greek sculptureby the complete cooperaionof the animal and the resulting balancebetween the
two protagonists.This original sense of mutualityis movingly
expressed by the prayer of the Aino addressedto the Sacred
Bear whom they are aboutto sacrifice:
"We are holding a great festival in your honor. Be not
afraid. We will not hurt you. We will only kill you and send
you to the god of the forest who loves you. We are about to
offeryou a good dinner,the best you have ever eaten among us,
and we will all weep for you together.The Aino who will kill
you is the best shot among us. There he is, he weeps and asks
your forgiveness; you will feel almost nothing, it will be done
so quickly.We cannot feed you always,as you will understand.
We have done enough for you; it is now your turn to sacrifice
yourself for us. Do not forget our messages to the god; we
love you much, and our childrenwill never forget you."10
There is no less unity betweenman and animal, man and
nature,in Picasso'sMan than there is in the Greek Calf Bearer.
They both express the archetypalsituationof totemismwhich
images "man'sreverencefor those animals... on which he depends, to which he feels in a way grateful, and yet the destruction of which is a necessityto him. And all this springs from
the belief of man's affinitywith those forces of nature upon
which he mainly depends."11But in each case the concept of
unity is of an entirely differentcharacter.While it is essentially realisticin the earlierwork,in Picassoit is a dialectic,tragic
unity with one protagonistdefinitelystruggling against it and
the other in grave doubt how to face the predicament.Man is
condemnedto hold on, almostdesperately,to an unwilling, uncooperativeweight. Were he to let go it would certainlybe his
downfall. Picasso'sconfigurationexpressesin visual form the
dilemmaof man expressedby Sartre:"Man being condemned
to be free carriesthe weight of the whole world.... He is responsiblefor the world and for himself as a way of being ....
He is the one by whom it happens that there is a world....
The for-itself mustwholly assumethis situationwith its peculiar
coefficientof adversity,even though it be unsupportable.
"The for-itself apprehendsitself in anguish; that is ... a
being which is compelled to decide the meaning of beingwithin it and everywhereoutside it.
"I am abandonedin the world, not in the sense that I
might remain abandonedand passive like a board floating on
the water, but ratherin the sense that I find myself suddenly
alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear
the whole responsibilitywithout being able, whateverI do, to
tear myself away from this responsibilityfor an instant."12
These words were written during the same war yearswhen Picassocreatedhis sculptureof the Man with the Lamb.
0J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, New York, 1948, p. 509.
" B.
Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion, Anchor, p. 47.
12
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, New
York, 1957, pp. 52-59.-The italics are Sartre's. It should be noted
that these quotations are taken from the large work Being and Nothingness.

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