"Picabia's interest in the concept and techniques of transparency were rooted in his Cubist and Orphist periods. Since 1928 his work evolved into the mature which became known as "the transparencies", named for the multiple layers of transparent images, characterized by interchanging moods of wistfulness and melancholy and extensive reference to art of the past, juxtaposing human and heavenly beings, the first sensuous and naturalistic, the latter rigid and stern." (W. Camfield, Francis Picabia, his Art, Life and Times, New Jersey, 1979)