Velazquez's Las Meninas Painting Explained

Between endless COVID and now, the war in Ukraine, I figured that maybe we are all just about tired of all that's gone wrong in the world. So, I wanted to share something I found to be absolutely fascinating.

It's a long and not too easy read. But it's a study of a famous Spanish Artist's work, Las Meninas, a 17th Century masterpiece.

www.bbc.com...

From the article:

On one significant level, the work provides a self-portrait of the 57-year-old artist four years before his death in 1600, after he had spent more than three decades as court painter to King Philip IV of Spain. Palette in hand on the left side of the painting, Velázquez’s life-size selfie stares our way as if we were the very subject that he is busy capturing on an enormous canvas that rises in front of him – a painting-within-a-painting whose imaginary surface we cannot see.

What makes this piece of work so compelling is the multiplicity of moving parts. As well, it's replete with innuendo and mystery.

A dizzying retinal riddle of a painting, Las Meninas plays tug of war with our mind. On the one hand, the canvas’s perspective lines converge to a vanishing point within the open doorway, pulling our gaze through the work. On the other hand, the rebounding glare of the mirror bounces our attention back out of the painting to ponder the plausible position of royal spectres whose vague visages haunt the work. We are constantly dragged into and out of the painting as the here-and-now of the shadowy chamber depicted by Velázquez becomes a strangely elastic dimension that is both transient and eternal – a realm at once palpably real and mistily imaginary.

Check it out and you may well come to appreciate the oddities of thsi awesome master piece of art. One thing I would mention is that the lighting on this isn't good; it's best viewed on a tablet or similar device that allows you to zoom in to better view the details mentioned in the article.

Enjoy

a reply to: TonyS

Very good, but already posted recently: www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: TonyS

Excellent post ... whether it's been shared before or not. Really, for something like this, who cares? It's a welcome shift from all of the crap flying around our heads now.

I've read about half the essay. Have to head to work but I'll wrap it up later.

Thanks!

I agree.
This has been one of my favorite paintings from the first time I saw it (or a picture of it--on the list for the real thing), for all of the reasons the OP discusses. I was fairly young at the time and didn't know any of that, but it captivated me so much it stayed with me ever since. Everything about it. This to me is one of those "magical" pieces of art; ones that seem almost supernaturally able to capture some enigma we can almost understand. Or not. a reply to: incoserv