Las Meninas (Great Art)

LAS MENINAS (Diego Velázquez, Spanish, 1656)

Las Meninas ("The Ladies-in-waiting") is a large (over 10 x 9 feet) 1656 painting by Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. The focus--the little girl in white--is the "Infanta" (Princess) Margaret Theresa. On either side of her are the titular ladies in waiting; to our right, two dwarfs (one with his foot on the dog); behind the dwarfs a chaperone and a guard; in the doorway behind, the queen's chamberlain; and on the left, facing a large easel with its back to us, is the artist Velázquez himself. Intriguingly, a mirror hangs on the wall above the Infanta's head; in it are her parents, Spain's King Philip IV and his wife, Mariana of Austria. It has been suggested that they are sitting for a portrait by Velázquez, and the painting we see here is what they would have been looking at as they patiently sit. The ladies, it has been suggested, are trying to cajole the Infanta into joining her parents for the portrait. Marvelous!

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)