Becoming a history painter, Picasso transforms a tradition already in transformation. In the eighteenth century, Benjamin West and Jacques-Louis David elevate contemporary events to the level of myth, destabilizing the semiology of history painting. David changes the revolutionary Marat into a Christian martyr, replacing narrative with icon. Delacroix transforms an orphan girl into the symbol of a massacre, as Picasso will multiply the image of a weeping woman to express the horror of Guernica. But how does contemporary history inform Picasso’s work prior to 1937? And what are the limits of interpretation in his metamorphic universe?