Femme aux Bras Croisés (English: Woman with Folded Arms), is an oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso, which he created between 1901 and 1902 during his Blue Period. The subject of the painting is unknown, but she is considered to be an inmate of the Saint-Lazare hospital-prison in Paris. The painting is listed as one of the most expensive paintings after it achieved a price of $55 million at Christie's auction on 8 November 2000. Background This painting is considered to be an important work dating from Picasso's Blue Period. This period began in 1901 and ended in 1904 with the beginning of his Rose Period. The Blue Period represents an important shift in Picasso's approach from his previous work in terms of style and subject matter. In place of the popular scenes of urban leisure, he began to experiment with monochromes and focus on melancholy themes of poverty, loneliness and death. His paintings were now dominated by shades of blue and featured portraits of destitute, sick people and prostitutes. Picasso's friend Pierre Daix commented that this announced Picasso's "...descent into hell...[into] the depths of solitude and despair". This new style was heavily influenced by the death of Picasso's close friend Carles Casagemas, who committed suicide in 1901. Description Femme aux Bras Croisés is a portrait of a woman sitting in a prison cell. The image conveys an atmosphere of misery and torment, which is achieved by the woman's body posture and the starkness of her surroundings. Her crossed arms and blank stare illustrate her isolation, while her physical and emotional disconnection reflects her social isolation. It is believed that the painting was begun in France in the second half of 1901 and then moved to Spain, where Picasso made changes to the composition. This was confirmed by x-ray, which showed that Picasso had repainted the woman's hair over a previous hood. In her 1957 book Pablo Picasso, Antonina Vallentin discusses the haunting qualities of this painting. She considers the subject to be an inmate who recently attempted suicide and now carries the blank but menacing stare of those unfortunates who found themselves at Saint-Lazare hospital-prison during the early 1900s. Picasso often visited the Saint-Lazare hospital-prison in Paris in the second half of 1901 to find models for his paintings. John Richardson commented that, "The Saint-Lazare women were victims of society nobody would deny, but they are also to