This self-portrait casts the twenty-five-year-old painter as a hardy, athletic figure and sets the stage for the legend of Picasso as the artistic champion of the twentieth century. In preparatory drawings the artist included a brush in his right hand, but he removed it in this final version. Its absence attests to the notion that creative genius is not simply manual dexterity but the expression of an inner vision, here symbolized by the artist’s intense, staring eyes.