Great Art Explained: Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez

"Las Meninas", Diego Velasquez's portrait of a Spanish princess and her entourage

is one of (if not THE) most widely discussed painting in Western Art.

Every viewing raises more questions and every answer is followed by a dense network of meanings.

It is not only a high point of realism in painting, a perfect lifelike depiction of the Spanish Court,

it is also a complex meditation on painting itself.

It is a spellbinding work that is concerned with how we view a painting, and how the subjects in a painting view us.

Velasquez was 57 years old when he painted this, and had been the court painter for over 30 years.

But in this painting - for the first time - e includes himself among the courtiers,

painting a Monumental canvas 10 and 1/2 ft tall by 9 ft
wide.

The same size as the actual painting that the painted canvas is shown within.

But who is he painting? The infanta? The King and Queen of Spain? Or is he painting you looking at him?

Early in his career, Velasquez produced several of these "kitchen" or "Tavern" scenes, known in Spanish as "Bodegones".

They showed Ordinary People in ordinary settings, often with hidden allegorical meaning.

When he was just 18, he painted this extraordinary work, which shows a precocious talent

for capturing the everyday moment and clearly shows his immense skill in depicting different materials and textures,

as well as his mastery of light and Shadow on both opaque and reflective
surfaces.

The detail of the eggs frying in hot oil is a masterclass.

This painting which was probably painted to show off his skills, became his calling card to the Royal Palace.

Here, the water dripping down the Jug demonstrates his astonishing ability to create an almost photographic reality.

Common people were always treated with dignity by the artist and his early paintings not only showed a supremely confident technique and attention to detail, he gave workers a gravitas in his paintings.

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, was born in 1599 in Seville, to a family with plenty of intellect but little financial means.

Precocious talentedd, he began a six-year apprenticeship when
he was 12 years old,

with the painter Francisco Pacheco, learning classical techniques of painting.

But the young artist quickly moved away from Pacheco's old-fashioned stiff style, towards a new dramatic naturalism inspired by Caravaggio and his followers.

There is no evidence he saw caravaggio's work in person,

but he knew the work of Pieter Aertsen, a Dutch painter accredited with
he invention of the Monumental genre scene,

which combines still life and genre painting, and often
includes a Biblical scene in the background.

Almost like a split screen effect. Velasquez
painted several of these types of scenes,

and he is clearly already experimenting with illusion,
with the picture within a picture.

Something he will perfect later in Las Meninas.

In 1623, two years after Philip IV came to the throne in Spain at the age of 16,

Velasquez, who was already being
talked about in the right circles,

was summoned to Madrid to paint a portrait of the king which
we think is this one.

It was an immediate success, and he was pronounced "official painter to the king" on the spot,

with a promise that no one else should portray the king without his permission.

A remarkable achievement for such a young man, and one which awakened jealousy from the other court painters.

Philipe IV of Spain and Velasquez were linked together like no other patronage in art history.

He first painted him at the age of 24 and 33 years later this painting would
be his last of the king.

Their relationship was unusually close for a monarch and his painter,

and the King often came to Velasquez while he was painting in his Workshop - just for a quick chat.

It has been said that the principal motivating force in Velasquez's life, was the desire to be a nobleman,

and he would remain attached to the court for the rest of his life, where step by step he would Ascend through the hierarchy of Court appointments.

Working his way up to a Knighthood, and he used Las Maninas to prove that he should be considered as a Noble.

At the same ime he is painting his Masterpiece, a committee are deciding whether he can be made a knight of the order of Santiago, in other words be ennobled.

There is a reason he has put himself in one of his paintings for the first time - on an equal footing with Spanish royalty.

It is so important to understand that a painter in 17th century Spain and elsewhere, was considered as just another crafts person, like a carpenter.

In other words, a manual worker. And like most most Court painters he
had many other jobs.

Velasquez was also the "Royal Chamberlain", a job that involved looking after
the palace, buying firewood, bedding, and Crockery.

He had a key to every room in the palace and we
can see here, hanging from the painters belt,

the symbolic keys of his court offices of which he
was inordinately proud.

He was also the curator of the King's galleries, responsible for negotiating
the purchase of hundreds of Works.

In fact, almost every Titian you see today in the Prada, was bought
by Velasquez, on trips to Italy.

The artist had a long life, but only produced between 110 and
120 known canvases.

He produced no etchings or Engravings and only a few drawings are attributed to him.

This all ties into his two enormous, but mutually exclusive, ambitions.

He wanted to be seen as the greatest painter of the Spanish court

but he also wanted to go down in history as a great gentleman.

The problem was that throughout his time in the palace, his close friendship with the King, meant he had his enemies in the court,

who were determined to stop his rise through the ranks.

Philipe became king in 1621 at the age of 16 and heir to the Hapsburg art collection in Madrid.

In a court that commissioned not only paintings but poetry and theatre too. We often talk about the "Golden Age of Spain",

and it was a time when great palaces were being built and culture was
flourishing, with among others: El Greco, Velasquez, Zurburan, Murillo and Cervantes.

But Philip IV was in trouble for much of his rule.

Mainly because of long drawn out expensive Wars, revolts, revolutions,
and trouble in the colonies.

But also because of genetics and inbreeding.

For two centuries the Hapsburg Kings had married first cousins, nieces, and aunts.

Resulting in an onslaught of physical
and mental ailment

s, because of their limited gene pool.

The distinctive "Hapsburg jaw" we see on
Philip IV was inherited from earlier Hapsburgs,

and likely the result of the Royal Family's inbreeding.

Despite the Spanish Colonial Empire, the country was almost continuously in financial difficulties,

and had declared bankruptcies in 1647 and 1653.

The Spanish royal family was so broke that they
often couldn't afford firewood to heat the palace, or bread for the tables.

In fact, when Velasquez died, the crown still owed him 17 years of salary payments.

And yet, what does las meninas portray?

A wealthy family dressed in the finest clothes money can buy surrounded by gloriously attired servants in an ornate and Sumptuous setting.

Like all Royal portraiture, it is a form of propaganda designed to
show a courtly audience dynastic stability and Imperial wealth.

But one thing Philip IV can't disguise is the lack of a male Heir.

He is on his second marriage by the time of this painting.

He had 10 children with his first wife, Isabelle de Borbon, but only one son and Heir.

His wife died in 1644. And then in 1646, their son died.

A year later, in a hurry to create a new son and Heir, he married
his 14-year-old niece, Marianna - when he was 44.

She gave him five children, but only two survived
to adulthood.

A daughter, Margarita Theresa, born in 1651 - the infanta in Las Maninas, who sadly would die in her teens,

and the Future King Charles II of Spain who was born 5 years after Las Meninas.

Charles however, was severely disabled, thanks to inbreeding,

and he would be the last of the Spanish Hapsburgs.

Velasquez's position at the court gave him unique access to the Royal collections,

and he would naturally be influenced by The Works he saw every day.

He also visited Italy at least twice, on
extended trips to buy paintings for Philipe IV,

and to study the great Masters.

He was accompanied on these trips by his enslaved assistant a notable painter in his own right, Juan de Pareja,

who would be given his freedom by Velasquez shortly after he painted this beautiful and dignified portrait in 1650.

The work's extraordinary lifelike quality, so astonished the papal court, that he was asked to paint Pope InnocentX

, one of the painter's best and most psychologically insightful Works,
which has been described as "a symphony in red".

It is said that when the pope saw his portrait
completed, he exclaimed somewhat bewildered: "Troppo Vero" - "too truthful".

The influence of contemporary
Italian artists, can be seen in Velasquez's mastery of perspective, and his rendering of the male nude in this large canvas,

he painted while in Rome.

It was Titian and Peter Paul Rubens, who would have more
influ

ence than any other artist on the development of his style,

and in particular his Royal portraits.

Where, in some cases, we can clearly see stylistic similarities between the great Masters.

This early Titian painting hung in the Spanish Royal Palace when Philip IV came to power

and was used as the standard by which all other Royal equestrian portraits would be judged.

And this, spectacular
life-sized equestrian Portrait by Velasquez of Philip IV

was clearly influenced by Titian and Rubens, not only in its Simplicity of pose

but also in its depiction of the King as a restrained and powerful ruler.

Velasquez's portrait however is livelier, more elegant and uses a lighter pallette,

and doesn't rely on a highly charged background.

The Flemish painter Rubens, even visited the Spanish Court of Philip IV in 1628.

He was actually on a diplomatic Mission, but still managed to paint five
portraits of Philipe,

while he was there.

He became great friends with Velasquez and encouraged him to
go to Italy to study the Italian Masters to move away from chiaroscuro,

to be looser in his brush work, and to adopt a brighter palette colour.

Rubens was not only a successful painter, but he was also
an important Diplomat who had been knighted despite his humble background.

The ambitious Velasquez, saw Rubens as a role model, and through him he found someone he could identify with.

It was Titian's late works that inspired both Rubens and Velasquez.

Titian used sketchy and Loosely applied brush work, and he would drag and smudge paint over the canvas

to suggest the form, rather than using definitive Strokes.

He also used a very thick rough weave for his canvases, that gave texture to
his surfaces.

Velasquez would do the same.

Maybe less well known is the influence of Sánchez
Coello and Antonis Mor, who were in The Royal collection,

and would also be important to how Velasquez
helped Philipe IV Forge a calculated image of power and piety.

Probably the biggest influence on
Las Maninas though, was a painting from two centuries earlier, "The Arnolfini Portrait: by Jan Van Eyck,

that I discussed in my earlier video.

This too was in the collection of Philip IV, and Velasquez
would pass it every day on the way to his Studio.

Like Las Meninas, the Arnolfini portrait also has a mirror positioned at the back of the pictorial space,

reflecting two figures who would have the

same point of view as we do.

It also plays with pictorial space, reflections and illusion.

Not only in art but also in literature.

For example, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, is itself a complex multifaceted picture of the relationship between reality and illusion.

Velasquez used a very coarse canvas, and he didn't use many preliminary sketches that we know of,

but rather, he painted directly onto the canvas.

As we can see with these x-rays
he often changed his work as he was painting it,

and these changes are known as "pentimento"

Velasquez was so experienced by the time of Las Meninas, that the work has very few changes, apart from his self-portrait,

which initially turned his head more towards the infanta.

For much of his early career, the artist used a red ground for underlayer, good for building up contrast and tonal values

- the lights and the darks.

But by the time of Las meninas, he had a much
looser style,

and diluted his pigments to make them more translucent and fluid, and he painted quite thinly,

so this necessitated using a neutral grey ground, which allowed for a much wider tonal range, greater luminosity,

and a general silvery range of colour.

This was unusual at the time, as 14:21
most canvases were primed using dark colours.

He would paint "alla Prima" or wet-on-wet, where layers
of wet paint are applied to existing layers of wet paint, often finishing his paintings in one session.

With a painting of this size and complexity, that would not be possible, and we can see one example

in the infanta's sleeve, where although it is mostly wet-on-wet, areas of highlights have been dabbed
on later in thick impasto, to create texture.

With Velazquez, you are always aware
that you are looking at paint.

He doesn't try to hide his brushmarks - quite the reverse.

By the time he came round to Painting Las Meninas,

his technique was at its freest and most fluid,

it is often called a precursor to impressionism,

but it's more than that.

Here, the silver of the tray on
which the Menina holds the ceramic container

is achieved with a couple of flicks of white paint,

and the flowers are just a few slashes of red. We often talk about Chiaroscuro, the extreme contrast
15:21
of light and dark, when we talk about Velasquez, and comparisons are often made with Caravaggio.
15:26
He painted his most technically Caravaggio-like picture, "Christ after the flagellation', early on.
15:33
But later, he used a more subtle variation of chiarascuro. Still using light to direct our vision but more subtly.
15:40
As we can see when we look at Las Maninas in greyscale. Velasquez uses a dark colour
15:47
palette for Las Meninas, mostly neutral colours and quite limited, and yet he manages to get a broad
15:53
range of tones with just whites, Blues, yellows, ochres, and small touches of red, that help draw
15:59
your eyes around the painting towards key points of interest. Velasquez even lets us know which colours
16:05
he used, as the palette that the painter holds in his left hand, has the very pigments he used on Las Maninas.
16:16
Between 1640 and 1660, Velasquez mostly painted single portraits. The composition
16:22
and structure of Las Meninas was extremely complicated, and with so many characters it's really like the staging of a piece of theatre or performance art. It needed to be
16:31
carefully planned out, with every character seen, as well as being seen. In Velasquez's hands, they
16:37
are fully realised individuals. Thanks to the 18th century art historian, Antonio Palamino,
16:43
who wrote a 1724 book on Spanish painters, we know quite a lot about the people in Las Meninas,
16:50
including their names. Palomino spoke to Velasquez 's colleagues after his death, as well
16:55
as four of the nine people pictured in the painting. Most of the members of the Court are grouped around the 5-year-old infanta, Margarita Teresa, who is attended by two Maninas - or maids in
17:06
Waiting. María Agustina Sarmiento, who is passing her water in terracotta pots (so it could be summer).
17:13
and Isabel de Velasco, who seems to be in mid-curtsy. Velasquez had painted the princess
17:19
many times, but unfortunately she would die before she was out of her teens. She is in the centre
17:25
of the painting, with the central axis passing between her eyes. Her face is spotlit by light
17:31
coming from an unseen window - top right, and her white satin dress glows as she is bathed in the sun.
17:37
It is the princess's presence that makes this a "political painting", as at the time the infanta was the only child of Philipe IV, with the dynastic succession resting on her tiny shoulders.
17:50
Showing her as a healthy and beautiful princess is important for future marriage prospects.
17:56
We don't know the name of the dog, but we know the breed is a Spanish Mastiff, which were bred as guard dogs. There are few artists with such skill in painting animals as Velasquez! The dog is being
18:07
nudged awake by Nicolas Pertusato, an Italian dwarf and Court Jester. Next to him, is the Austrian dwarf
18:14
Maria Bárbola, who is depicted in an unusual way for a person in her position at the time.
18:20
People with dwarfism, were considered curiosities, as little more than "pets", but Velasquez always gave
18:26
dignity to characters who, due to their profession or condition, were treated as lesser beings.
18:31
He shows Maria standing upright, beside the princess. She has a thoughtful and controlled expression,
18:38
and is looking directly at us - or the royal couple. Velasquez entered the service of the
18:44
palace as a royal servant and initially was considered a worker, just like the dwarves of the court, or the jesters. And so he treated them with an empathy, not seen before in Royal
18:54
portraits. He never mocked them or caricatured them, and often made them the focal point, as
19:00
fully fleshed out humans. In the shadows, this woman is Doña Marcela de Ulloa, the infanta's chaperone, and she is in
19:07
mid-conversation with an unidentified bodyguard. At the rear is Don José Nieto Velázquez, brother of
19:14
the artist, and the Queen's Chamberlain. Velasquez had possibly painted him before. He has paused at
19:20
the door, pulling back the heavy exterior curtain, with one foot resting on a step while his weight
19:25
is on his other leg on a different step. As the Queen's attendant he was required to be at hand to
19:31
open and close doors for her. We don't know however if he is coming or going, but the light certainly
19:37
pulls us in, and it looks as if he will usher all of us, out from the created world and into the real world.
19:45
In this masterpiece of Illusion, Velasquez clearly goes beyond the physical confines of space,
19:50
by playing with implied spaces, in this case the rest of the palace. Velasquez himself is pictured
19:56
emerging from behind the canvas, moving into our gaze from the shadows into the light, as he looks
20:03
at us in the implied space looking at him in the pictorial space. He is supremely self-confident and
20:10
certainly no subservient courtier. He is proudly holding the tools of his trade, his Palette is
20:16
turned towards us showing its colours he also holds a mahlstick, used for steadying the hand
20:22
when doing close work. And the long round brushes we know he used which created soft edges rather
20:28
than hard lines. His brush is dipped in paint and perhaps he is considering whether to add some
20:33
finishing touches, but it is also possible that the first stroke has not yet been applied. His hand is
20:39
just a flurry of rapid brush strokes and it would appear to be metamorphosing into his brush, as his
20:46
flesh becomes instrument. It is audacious that a servant, albeit a courtier and Royal favourite, has
20:53
given himself greater prominence than his master. But it is also inconceivable that Philip IV did
21:01
not give the concept his Blessing in advance. In the same way the Queen's Chamberlain is opening
21:06
up the implied space beyond the picture frame, the mirror here is reflecting the opposite direction,
21:12
forward into the viewer's space. The reflection is of King Philip IV and Maria of Austria, the
21:19
King and Queen. We know it is a mirror, and not a painting, as everything else is muted and fuzzy,
21:25
whereas the image of the king and queen is bathed in light in the beveled mirror giving them an
21:30
almost divine presence. That is if we believe the King and Queen are in the same room as the other characters.
21:40
The aforementioned historian, Palamino, noted that the mirror which shows the royal couple,
21:45
was actually a reflection, not of the real monarchs in the room, but of the canvas Velasquez is working
21:51
on. In other words, the couple are not in the room. This idea is disputed though, as the reflection
21:58
is not logical. It has to be said though, this is not the first time Velasquez has painted an image
22:04
which explores the relationship between reality, reflection, and image, and which flouts the laws of
22:10
Optics. Here too, we see the mirror with this rather blurred reflection. The constant speculation as to
22:17
what is happening in this painting, who is where, and why, is absolutely intentional on the part
22:22
of Velasquez. Whatever the study of perspective or reflection tells us, the Royal presence is still
22:29
the most plausible explanation for the outward glances of the characters, and I think that the
22:34
King and Queen ARE in the room, and the mirror IS a reflection of them at the far end of the room,
22:40
sitting for Velasquez. The fact that the Queen's Chamberlain is opening the curtain to the Palace,
22:45
suggests that the royal couple are preparing to exit. This would explained the infanta's gaze towards her parents. Velasquez, who seems to be peeping out of the darkness realising
22:55
his time is up, and the Manina to the right of the infanta, who is beginning to curtsy, as she
23:01
looks towards the couple. There is a palpable sense of anticipation in the air. If the king and queen
23:07
are there, and I think they are, then Velasquez has one more trick up his sleeve. He has placed
23:13
the king and queen outside of the pictorial space, standing exactly where we the commoners
23:19
would stand, when we view the paintings.We are standing right next to King Philipe IV of Spain!
23:28
With this painting, Velasquez was out to prove that painting was a noble, intellectual art, and Las Maninas would be evidence. It is in fact, a portrait about the painting of a
23:40
portrait. Let's start with the physicality of the space. The building was destroyed by fire
23:45
in 1734, but the historical plan still exist. Las meninas was painted in the Cuarto del Príncipe, or the
23:53
king's quarters, in the Alcazar in Madrid. Which is the room depicted in the work. It was once part of
23:59
the apartment occupied by the Crown Prince Don Baltasar Carlos, who had died in 1646. Once the
24:06
painting was finished it was planned to be placed in that same room. An inventory of the room, proved
24:12
that everything Velasquez painted, was really there (apart from the mirror in the back). The illusion starts with the almost life-size figures. The painting is enormous, coming in at over 10 ft
24:23
by 9 ft. The room had these wonderful high ceilings, and the shutters have been placed by Velasquez to
24:30
reveal slivers of light exactly where he wants it. The main light source is from an invisible window
24:35
to the right, and another source is the door at the back, that illuminates the figure and sends a
24:41
pencil thin beam across the floor. While Las Meninas is clearly a royal painting, it stands out from
24:47
other court paintings, because the piece was intended to hang in a private room rather than displayed
24:53
publicly.It may look formal to us nowadays, but compared to other Royal portraits, Las Meninas is
25:00
fairly spontaneous, casual, and relaxed. There is a LOT in this painting; people, animals, Reflections,
25:07
paintings on the wall, textures, other objects, and movement - and yet, there is a cohesion to the
25:13
canvas, because it is organised in an orderly composition. It is balanced perfectly with the
25:19
relatively quiet top half against the busy bottom half. The figures occupy a clear horizontal strip
25:26
across the painting, but it isn't frieze-like, as they are at different depths into the view. The first
25:32
layer is the canvas, the dwarf, and the dog. Then we have the infanta and her maids. And then Velasquez,
25:40
the chaperone and the bodyguard. The layering continues throughout the picture, and beyond
25:45
the picture frame. The painting features several frames; the frame of the room in which they are
25:51
all standing, the frames of the paintings on the wall, the frame of the canvas Velasquez is working
25:57
on, the frame of the mirror, and the frame of the door in the background. These frames provide a
26:03
strong linear and geometric theme to the painting. You get a feel of structure and organisation.
26:08
But, a perfect perspective is not essential to our understanding of this painting, any more than a
26:14
perfect understanding of optics. What is the focal point? Well there are several possibilities. Just
26:21
look at the picture as a whole, and you notice your eye scans around the canvas, as it would do in any large space. We ricochet from one figure to another. Possible Focus points are the man in the
26:33
doorway, the infanta, or the reflection of the King and Queen. It seems at first glance that Velasquez
26:39
is drawing all our attention to the infanta, and he has used some clever and subtle techniques to draw
26:45
attention to her in such a busy scene. There is the dress of course, but also she faces towards the main light
26:51
source coming from the right, while most of the other figures are facing away from the light. Maria Augustina is looking directly at her, and the characters to the left nudge
27:01
us towards the infanta. We do know that this painting was not intended to be on public View
27:07
and was really considered a private possession of the king - for an audience of one. Which would
27:13
suggest the focal point is the reflection of the king? The focus is STILL highly debated
27:18
and always will be, but the vanishing point is not. It comes from José Nieto, as he stands in the staircase,
27:26
more specifically the crook of his arm is the exact vanishing point. THIS is the key to Velasquez's
27:34
mastery of Illusion. He uses realism, light, and structure, to pull together the disparate elements
27:40
in an exquisitely balanced painting. It is an image so complex, that he could only have achieved it at
27:47
this later stage of his life, with the extensive knowledge he has picked up from a lifetime of painting.
27:55
The two paintings on the back wall are important symbolically, and represent two oil paintings by Rubens, Velasquez's role model. And show scenes from Ovid's "Metamorphoses".
28:06
There is a good reason they are there. If we remember that Velasquez wants desperately to raise his
28:12
profession from "Tradesmen" to "Artistic nobility". They tell the tale of the superiority, the nobility,
28:19
and the Divine calling of the artist. In which Mortals prove themselves more skilled than even
28:24
the gods. Rubens was the most influential Flemish artist of the 17th century, so by
28:30
linking himself with Rubens, Velasquez is showing that he had reached the highest tier in European art.
28:39
One of the great enigmas in the portrait of Velasquez, is the Red Cross on his tunic. It is the
28:45
heraldic symbol of the order of Santiago, a religious and Military order, founded in the 12th
28:50
century. He had petitioned the king to make him a knight of Santiago for years, to secure Noble
28:56
status, citing the link between artistic nobility and social nobility. But the committee of the order
29:03
of Santiago refused - due to his bloodline. It was rumoured that his grandparents were Jewish converts.
29:10
Luckily for Velasquez, as well as being employer and employee, he and Philip IV were close
29:16
friends, and he was finally inducted in the order in 1659, a year before his death, after the king
29:23
obtained a dispensation from the Pope to overrule doubts as to the artist's blood and trade.
29:29
Diego Velasquez, in many ways was unremarkable, apart from the fact he was appointed court painter.
29:36
He had one wife, one Friend (the King), and one Studio (the palace), and spent his whole life
29:43
climbing the social ladder. His Knighthood is the culmination. What makes makes this cross in the
29:49
painting interesting, is that he was knighted a full 3 years after Las meninas was finished,
29:55
and a year before he died, which means that the cross was painted on the artist's tunic years
30:01
after the painting was created. Tradition had it, that after the artist's death, Philipe IV
30:07
himself painted the Red Cross of the Knights of Santiago on the tunic, but that's unlikely.
30:12
After the painting was cleaned in the early 1980s it was revealed that the brush work of the
30:18
cross is uniform with the rest of the surface, so it was almost certainly Velasquez
30:23
who painted the cross. We can only imagine the immense satisfaction the artist got from adding
30:29
the cross to the painting, and therefore rubbing the snobby courtier's noses in the fact that he
30:34
was now one of them. Velasquez, who was in essence, born a trades person, died a wealthy Noble. On his
30:43
death it is said that the King was heartbroken, and the great friendship that had united them, is
30:48
evident in three words that the Monarch wrote in a memorandum after his death: "I am shaken".