shown in three-quarters view and the eyes viewed from the front. This treatment of the face is echoed in the faces of the Guernica women. However, The Weeping Woman is distinct from these figures in the way that Picasso used cubist forms of fragmentation to depict the face in a series of angular planes, rather than the flat, curvilinear images in Guernica. Symbolism and interpretations The image of Picasso's weeping woman has been interpreted in a variety of ways. The symbolism of women suffering has been directly associated with the suffering of Spain that prevails in the iconography of Guernica. For Picasso, the image of the woman with the dead child represented the reality of the civil war, which had been covered in the French media with images of mothers and children in distress. In addition, the French Popular Front had used such photographs to protest against the conflict in 1936. A further interpretation of the painting is that the woman illustrates the Christian motif of the Virgin Mary mourning her dead son, Jesus Christ. This was a particularly prominent theme in Baroque Spanish religious art. Although Picasso was an atheist, John Richardson considered that his art made references to religious themes. Marilyn McCully opined that the weeping woman works are related to the Mater Dolorosa, Our Lady of Sorrows stating, "In their essence as images of art, their emotional power lies in their origins among the painted wood, life-sized statues of the Madonna carried in Spain in religious processions, whose tears are jewels that sparkle as they run down their cheeks, and whose garments are real lace, velvets and silver - at once real and other worldly". Christie's describes the weeping woman as a more generic victim and witness to the destruction.She is moreover a universal figure not attached to any single event nor even to her cataclysmic century as a whole - she is the timelessly universal messenger of unfathomable and inconsolable human sorrow, the bearer of an elemental emotion that is as miraculously and beautifully human to contemplate as it is disturbing to behold.Jonathan Jones for The Guardian noted that the painting demonstrates both hope and fury. Picasso's biographer, Roland Penrose, who was the previous owner, considered it to be an illustration of optimism, perhaps depicting the healing power of mourning. In evidence of this, Jones pointed to elements of the painting, such as the flower in