Like Goya, Picasso suffered from deafness. He was likewise preoccupied with mortality. However, being Andalusian, he was apt to be at the mercy of this obsession, just as he was at the mercy of that other Andalusian obsession, the mirada fuerte (literally, ‘strong gazing’). ‘In Andalusia the eye is akin to a sexual organ . . . looking too intently at a woman is akin to ocular rape.’ […]

[Anthropologist David] Gilmore cites an Andalusian voyeurs’ club whose members would check on the marriage banns, then peep in at night on the newlyweds. Although Picasso’s psychological make-up was infinitely more complex, he was a supreme embodiment of the mirada fuerte, especially in old age, when his imagination reverted to his Andalusian roots. ‘The eyes of that Andalusian are killing me’: these lines by Gôngora, Picasso’s favorite Spanish poet, could be written on the gravestones of all the women in the artist’s life.

John Richardson, A Life of Picasso: The Prodigy, 1881-1906 (1991)