This lithograph of Françoise Gilot, dressed in Renaissance-period costume, is part of the important and extensive Woman in an Armchair series that Picasso produced from 1947 to 1949. In this image, the woman’s head rests atop a disembodied torso of esoteric signs and symbols. Apart from the figure’s right hand and face, little remains of recognizable human anatomy. Rather than operate as part of a whole, the geometric designs on the dress read visually as separate units. Executed in the same years as the illuminations to Le chant des morts, a similar, distinct repertoire of barbell-like forms emerges in this series of lithographs, as well as in the contemporaneous prints at left and right.