Diego Velázquez's painting Las Meninas, created nearly 370 years ago, continues to enthrall audiences today, evident from its millions of views online. The work diverges from typical royal portraits, offering a candid glimpse into daily life within the Spanish court. The central figures include the young Infanta Margarita Theresa and her entourage, alongside Velázquez himself, who is actively painting. The mirror's reflection possibly shows the king and queen or invites the viewer to perceive themselves as part of the scene, making the painting's interpretation endlessly intriguing. Lines converge around the figure of Don José Nieto Velázquez, suggesting deeper compositional meanings.
Through the 36 years he worked for King Philip IV, Velázquez produced dozens of paintings of the Spanish royal family. But the large-scale Las Meninas is different: the painting appears more like a snapshot of daily life than a typical visage of royals posing to be painted.
The figures it depicts include Philip's five-year-old daughter Infanta Margarita Theresa and her entourage, as well as Velázquez himself, at work on a painting - which may be a portrait of the king and queen, reflected as they are on the mirror in the back wall, or perhaps the very image we're looking at.
Or could we possibly be Philip and Mariana ourselves?
On the rearmost plane of Las Meninas stands the queen's chamberlain Don José Nieto Velázquez, on whom it can hardly be a coincidence that all of the painting's lines converge, like a vanishing point.
Collection
[
|
...
]