Imagine a warm, sunny day of Spring, a refined villa on the French Riviera, and two of the most fascinating people of the XX Century meeting for the first (and last) time: Brigitte Bardot and Pablo Picasso.
“It is my misfortune, and probably my delight, to use things as my passions tell me. What a miserable fate for a painter who adores blondes to have to stop himself putting them into a picture because they don’t go with the basket of fruit!”
– Pablo Picasso
When Brigitte Bardot met Pablo Picasso in 1956, she was 21 and he was 74. Picasso was already considered one of the greatest artist of all time, and Bardot had already made 17 films.
In 1956 Brigitte Bardot attended the Cannes Film Festival and came to visit the artist at is home on the French Riviera.
LIFE magazine’s photographer Jerome Brierre photographed the two together.
The pairing of the young and beautiful Bardot with the older and brilliant painter would have entered into History. Brigitte was extremely excited to meet Picasso, and remained bewitched by his strong personality and charm.
On the other hand, Brigitte’s beauty had a certain effect on the painter, who was notorious for his affairs with much younger women.
Picasso never painted Bardot, but Lydia Corbett, one of Picasso’s frequent models at the time, claimed Bardot saw her at Cannes and adopted her blonde-haired, ponytailed look as her own. Sure enough, Brigitte would have loved to become Picasso’s muse.
From one beauty to another. It’s tough being us. We love we, oui?