friends that Picasso would frequent the Cirque Medrano. In his book Picasso and Apollinaire: The Persistence of Memory, Peter Read notes that preparatory drawings for the work revealed that the large jester was actually a representation of El Tio Pepe Don José, the head of a circus troupe. He continues by opining that the figures in the painting are allegorical and represent Picasso and his social circle facing a new century without a clear path to guide them. Harold B. Plum notes that the figures in the painting are placed from left to right in a receding order of height, with the tallest figure being Picasso himself. He describes the painting as an illustration of the artist's personal transition. "In the painting, he was depicting a metamorphosis from late childhood to adulthood, in life and art." E.A. Carmean has drawn a connection between the figures in the painting and the circumstances of Picasso's own personal life. At the time that Picasso was working on this painting he was living with his partner Fernande Olivier. She had brought a ten-year-old girl home from an orphanage and then returned her. Carmean noted that in the painting, the harlequin, who represents Picasso, is reaching out for the girl who is standing behind his back. On the right side of the painting is an isolated woman, representing Olivier, who is sitting with one hand on her shoulder and the other in her lap as if holding a missing baby. Carmean considers that this image is a metaphor for this emotional incident in Picasso's life. Significance and legacy Family of Saltimbanques is the culmination of the Saltimbanque cycle, a series of drawings, paintings, engravings and sculptures that Picasso focused on from late 1904 to the end of 1905. After studying the lives of the circus performers of the Cirque Medrano, Picasso chose to portray them not from the cheerful perspective of their performances, but as an isolated group within a static and melancholy image. Musée d'Orsay describes the painting as a masterpiece and remarks that, "Picasso is less interested in the show, usually excluded from the frame, than in the other aspects of their lives, capturing a medial space between public and private worlds where in the most banal triviality and the most sublime grace converge." Provenance The painting was originally purchased directly from Picasso in 1908 by the Parisian businessman André Level for the