A posthumous portrait that Blay sculpted as a straightforward and intimate memento of his fifth son, Miguel Blay Pichard, Miguelito, who died on April 23, 1918. That is why his parents’ given names appear on the sides. The boy’s life, cut short at the age of seven years, nine months, is symbolized in a sober and unpretentious fashion in low-relief on the front of the pedestal: the broken trunk of a young tree that was growing within the bounds of a small hoop.

The artist sought to transmit the liveliness and optimism of a young boy in a very serene rendering of the head that clearly reveals his outer appearance. The straight hair that partially covers his forehead was one of his most characteristic features, as can be seen in one of the last photos of father and son -now in a private collection- smiling together in Blay’s studio. His parents’ sadness at this tragic event imbued the work with a nostalgia that led Bufill (1993, p. 33), who undoubtedly knew the circumstances, to qualify it as a “pathetic child’s head.” And Blay may have been inspired by this tragedy when he designed the Christ of Peace for the Jesuit basilica of El Sagrado Corazón de Jesús in Gijon, which he had begun somewhat earlier and presented in Madrid in 1924 (Text drawn from Azcue, L.: Solidez y belleza. Miguel Blay en el Museo del Prado, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2016, pp. 33-34).