he violence and misery a woman has suffered are conveyed by the jagged lines and abstract facets of her face. In her clenched teeth is the handkerchief with which she also wipes her eyes, her tears are crystallized and caustic. As if her sorrow were inconsolable, Picasso painted this and other versions of the weeping woman in his mural Guernica to protest the slaughter of civilians on April 26, 1937, when German aircraft supporting Franco’s Fascists bombed the Basque town.