Le Matador, a remarkable self-portrait by Pablo Picasso created just three years before his death in 1973, went under the gavel at earlier this year with a staggering reserve price of US$20-25 million.

First unveiled at an exhibition at the Palais des Papes in Avignon shortly after the artist’s death, Le Matador depicts Picasso as a sword-yielding bullfighter in a ring surrounded by thousands of spectators, holding his blade in the style of a paintbrush, as if preparing for some final battle.

One of the most mature works in his oeuvre, the painting has been aptly described as a culmination of the painter’s life-long obsession with matadors. Familiar bullfighting from an early age, his first-ever painting – Le Picador, depicting a bullfighter on a horse entering an arena observed by spectators – was created when he was just eight, not long after his father had taken him to watch his first such contest.

Though Picasso spent most of his adult years in Paris, he had always retained a strong sense of his Spanish heritage. It’s perhaps fitting, then, that as he neared the end of his life, he returned, once again to the image of the matador and to the subject of his earliest artistic endeavour.