The most serious problem facing interpreters of this painting is the problem-pipe. It screams out for an interpretative solution. People just do not hold pipes that way. Picasso must have included it as a clue for those viewing it on this level. The pipe, a common symbol for intellectual reflection in nineteenth- and twentieth-century painting, looks as if it is held by the artist outside the painting as he ponders his image even if held by the model inside the painting. Thus Picasso, while meditating on the image, imagined his alter ego holding his own pipe. Sue Roe has described it as an "opium pipe", a drug Picasso then smoked.2