Pablo Picasso would soak up all the different styles of art he came in contact with and he had the technique to accurately reproduce them. In Two sisters (the meeting) the face of the woman on the right is rendered in the way an artist would paint a Christian icon, with its sharp edges. The heavy jaw and the high forehead are probably derived from African art, which Picasso was also interested in, and which would result in his époque nègre (or black period, negro period) in 1906 and 1907.
Pablo Picasso was brought up as a Catholic, which shows in his early work, but never so intense as during his blue period. Traumatic to Picasso was the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas and the pictorial vocabulary he used to express his grief is drawn directly from the Catholic culture, in particular the way Catholics deal with personal loss, such as the death of a friend.
Catholics are conditioned to participate in the Passion of Jesus Christ, Passion signifying Jesus' suffering due to his crucifiction. Some people feel such strong empathy that they are able to mentally induce wounds at their hands, known as stigmata. Perhaps for Cathlolics the crucifiction and burial of Jesus serves as a reference to deal with personal loss and trauma in general. As such Catholicism offers an environment in which it's socially acceptable to mourn and express one's sorrow, a resource which Pablo Picasso drew upon in his blue period.
