WASHINGTON - The year 1901 was an important one for Pablo Picasso. The painter was just 19 years old and living in Paris. He was in the middle of changing his style of painting. He painted furiously and was very poor. It wasn't strange for him to take one painting and reuse it to paint a fresh idea.

Now scientists and art experts say they've found a hidden painting from that time period. They used infrared technology on "The Blue Room," one of Picasso's earliest important paintings. Underneath it they discovered a painting of a bow-tied man with his face resting on his hand. His image was lying beneath the surface of the other painting.

Now the question that conservators at The Phillips Collection in Washington hope to answer is simply: Who is he?

The Mystery Man's Secrets

It's a mystery that is inspiring new detective work on the painting. "The Blue Room" was made early in Picasso's career. He painted it at the start of his distinctive "blue period" of sad subjects.

"When he had an idea, you know, he just had to get it down and realize it," curator Susan Behrends Frank said. She described how Picasso had quickly painted "The Blue Room" over another whole picture. "He could not afford to acquire new canvases every time he had an idea. He worked sometimes on cardboard because canvas was so much more expensive."

Experts had suspected there might be something under the surface of "The Blue Room." Some brushstrokes on the piece clearly don't match the painting of a woman bathing in Picasso's studio.

A conservator noted the odd brushstrokes in a 1954 letter. It wasn't until the 1990s that an X-ray of the painting first revealed a fuzzy image of something under the picture. It wasn't clear, though, that it was a portrait of a man.

In 2008, better technology was able to show details for the first time. A man's bearded face appeared, resting on his hand with three rings on his fingers. He's dressed in a jacket and bow tie, painted in a vertical composition.

"It's really one of those moments that really makes what you do special," said Patricia Favero. Favero is the conservator at The Phillips Collection. She helped piece together the best image yet of the man's face.

"The second reaction was, 'Well, who is it?' We're still working on answering that question," she said.

The Hidden Painting's True Colors

Scholars have decided that it was not a self-portrait. One possible figure is the Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard. Vollard hosted Picasso's first show in 1901. But there's no documentation and no clues were left on the canvas, so the research continues.

Experts have worked to study the painting over the past five years. They have developed a clearer image of the mystery picture under the surface. A technical study confirmed further information about it. The hidden portrait is a work the Spanish artist likely painted just before "The Blue Room," curators said.

People have been using other technology to scan the painting for more clues. Favero has been collaborating with different experts. They want to identify and map the colors of the hidden painting. They would like to recreate a digital image as close to the colors Picasso used as possible.

Curators are planning the first exhibit focused on "The Blue Room" for 2017. It will examine the discovery of the man's portrait beneath the painting.

For now, "The Blue Room" is in South Korea as part of a tour.

Picasso Recycled His Art

Hidden pictures have been found under other important Picasso paintings. A study of "La Vie" showed that Picasso changed the painting by a lot. And conservators found a portrait of a mustached man in another.

Dorothy Kosinski runs The Phillips Collection. She said new knowledge about Picasso and his process can be discovered through the high-tech efforts of museums working together.

"Our audiences are hungry for this. It's kind of detective work. It maybe adds mystery, while allowing them to be part of a piecing together of a puzzle," she said. "The more we can understand, the greater our appreciation is of its significance in Picasso's life."