"We're still working on answering that question," she said.

Curator Susan Behrends Frank told press agency AP: "When he [Picasso] had an idea, you know, he just had to get it down and realise it," explaining that the artist had quickly painted over another completed picture when the inspiration took him.

"He could not afford to acquire new canvasses every time he had an idea that he wanted to pursue. He worked sometimes on cardboard because canvas was so much more expensive.''

The Blue Room has been part of the Phillips Collection since 1927.

Conservators suspected back in 1954 it may have had another painting below its surface, as brushstrokes did not match the composition of a woman bathing in Picasso's studio.

But it was not until the 1990s that an X-ray revealed a "fuzzy image" of something under the main image.

Research on The Blue Room will continue and curators have planned a 2017 exhibition focusing on the painting and the portrait beneath it. It is also part of a tour to South Korea in 2017.

This is not the first time a hidden image has been found beneath a Picasso artwork.

A technical analysis of La Vie at the Cleveland Museum of Art revealed he had reworked the painting's composition, while a moustached man was found beneath the painting Woman Ironing at Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum.

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