Child with a Dove (1901) is an oil painting on canvas By
Picasso and measures 73/54 cm in size. The painting is now loaned to the National
Gallery, London. The whole canvas is heavily worked in thick layers of paint or
'impasto', and may have been painted over an earlier picture. In painting, impasto
(from the Italian for dough) describes areas of the surface of a painting, which are
heavily built up with paint layers. Impastoed paint is highly textured; brush or
palette knife marks are usually clearly evident. The intention of impasto is to make
the light falling across the painting reflect in a particularly noticeable way.
Highlights, or perhaps jewels on a costume, may be heavily impastoed for this
reason.
