Claude Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.

When Picasso's biographer, Pierre Daix, visited the artist in the Madoura studio in Vallauris, at the time that Plat à la tête de faune was executed, he was generally impressed by how 'at home' Picasso was producing his new ceramic works. Excited by the experimental possibilities created by the three-dimensional forms and unpredictability of the glazes, the production of ceramics enabled Picasso to approach the creative process anew.

Executed early in his collaboration with the Madoura studio, Plat à la tête de faune finds visual precedents in Picasso's work of this period. In this work, the plate is not treated as a decorated functional item but is transformed into a painting, where the object magically becomes the subject depicted. The vibrant aqua marine, reminiscent of the Mediterranean Sea only two kilometres away from Vallauris, provides a background to the face set into the recess of the plate. Executed with a light-hearted spontaneity, the face carries an open expression and a subtle smile, the fluid gravure marks breathing life into the elemental features. The two marks above the forehead suggest two short horns: the image of a faun. Simplified faces mounted with the spiked horns of a faun, were also a recurrent image in his ceramics and paintings from this time, inspired by bacchanalian myths of the Mediterranean.

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