The five-year-old Spanish princess stands at the centre of a studio surrounded by her attendants; the painter himself, brush in hand, looks out at us; a mirror at the back reflects the King and Queen. Who is looking at whom, and who is the true subject? Las Meninas is one of the most analysed paintings in Western art.
Key facts
- Artist
- Diego Velázquez1599–1660 · Spanish
- Date
- 1656
- Period
- Baroque1600–1720
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 318 × 276 cm
- Location
- Museo del Prado Madrid, Spain
Actual size
Compared with an adult 170 cm tall
Palette
#14100A#37291C#5D4730#937A5EBackground
The scene is a room in the old Alcázar palace in Madrid that served as Velázquez's studio. At the centre is the Infanta Margarita Teresa, daughter of King Philip IV, flanked by two maids of honour (meninas in Spanish, hence the title); to the right are two court dwarfs and a large dog.
By then Velázquez had been court painter for over thirty years and also served as palace marshal, responsible for decoration and ceremonies. The painting originally hung in the King's private study, seen only by the royal family.
The red cross on the painter's chest is the badge of the Order of Santiago. Velázquez was knighted only in 1659, three years after finishing the picture, so the cross must have been added later; legend says the King painted it himself.
Technique & composition
Velázquez's brushwork is remarkably loose. Seen close up, dress is a flurry of apparently random marks; step back and it becomes gleaming silk and lace. This technique, which only resolves at a distance, anticipated the Impressionists by two centuries.
The room is tall and deep. Light from windows on the right falls on the figures in front, and the space grows darker towards the back until another burst of light appears at . These layers of light and shade create a real sense of air, as if we could walk in.
On the left looms ; we cannot see what Velázquez is painting. This makes the viewer part of the scene: the painter may be looking at us, standing outside the picture.
Details
Symbolism
The King and Queen in the mirror
on the back wall reflects King Philip IV and Queen Mariana. They must be standing where the viewer stands, the focus of everyone's attention. Some think Velázquez is painting their portrait and the Infanta has come to visit; others that the mirror reflects the canvas itself.
The dignity of the painter
In seventeenth-century Spain painting was still seen as a craft rather than a liberal art. By placing himself among the royal family, in the same space as the King and wearing a knight's cross, Velázquez asserted that the painter was a learned man of standing.
Seeing and being seen
Several figures look straight out at us: the painter, the Infanta, a dwarf, the man at the door. The philosopher Michel Foucault opened The Order of Things with an analysis of this painting, arguing that it is about representation itself: how a picture shows the act of seeing.
Stories
- Did you know?
The maid of honour on the left offers the Infanta a small red clay jar of water. Court ladies of the time fashionably nibbled such pottery, believing it made the complexion paler.
- Did you know?
The Italian painter Luca Giordano called it “the theology of painting”, meaning it represents the highest level of the art.
- Did you know?
In 1957 Picasso made fifty-eight variations on Las Meninas, all now in the Museu Picasso in Barcelona.
Legacy
Las Meninas profoundly influenced later painters. Goya made an etching after it; Manet called Velázquez “the painter of painters” and learned his loose brushwork and tonal greys from him.
It has also become a favourite subject of philosophy, literature and art theory, seen as perhaps the first painting truly about painting itself, anticipating modern art's reflection on its own medium.
