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 —

he includes himself among the courtiers,

painting a monumental canvas
10 and 1/2 feet tall by 9 feet 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 talented,
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 the 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 time
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 Prado,

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, Zurbaran,
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 Habsburg kings

had married first cousins,
nieces and aunts,

resulting in an onslaught of physical
and mental ailments

because of their limited gene pool.

The distinctive "Habsburg jaw"
we see on Philip IV

was inherited from earlier Habsburgs,

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 Bourbon,

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 Meninas,
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 Habsburgs.

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 Innocent X

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 influence
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 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 Meninas 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 light and the dark.

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

and diluted his pigments t
o 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 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 of light and dark,

when we talk about Velasquez,

and comparisons
are often made with Caravaggio.

He painted his most technically
Caravaggio-like picture,

"Christ after the flagellation', early on.

But later, he used a more subtle
variation of chiarascuro.

Still using light to direct our vision
but more subtly.

As we can see when we look
at Las Maninas in greyscale.

Velasquez uses a dark colour palette
for Las Meninas,

mostly neutral colours and quite limited,

and yet he manages
to get a broad range of tones

with just whites, blues, yellows,
ochres, and small touches of red,

that help draw your eyes
around the painting

towards key points of interest.

Velasquez even lets us know
which colours he used,

as the palette that the painter holds
in his left hand,

has the very pigments
he used on Las Meninas.

Between 1640 and 1660,

Velasquez mostly painted
single portraits.

The composition 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 carefully planned out,

with every character seen,
as well as being seen.

In Velasquez's hands,
they are fully realised individuals.

Thanks to the 18th century
art historian Antonio Palamino,

who wrote a 1724 book on Spanish painters,

we know quite a lot
about the people in Las Meninas,

including their names.

Palomino spoke to Velasquez 's colleagues
after his death,

as well 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 "meninas"
- or maids-in-waiting.

María Agustina Sarmiento,

who is passing her water
in terracotta pots

(so it could be summer).

and Isabel de Velasco,
who seems to be in mid-curtsy.

Velasquez had painted the princess
many times,

but unfortunately she would die
before she was out of her teens.

She is in the centre of the painting,

with the central axis
passing between her eyes.

Her face is spotlit by light

coming from an unseen window - top right,

and her white satin dress glows
as she is bathed in the sun.

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.

Showing her as a healthy and beautiful princess is important for future marriage prospects.

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 nudged awake by Nicolas Pertusato, an Italian dwarf and Court Jester.

Next to him, is the Austrian dwarf Maria Bárbola, who is depicted in an unusual way for a person in her position at the time.

People with dwarfism, were considered curiosities,

as little more than "pets", but Velasquez always gave
dignity to characters who, due to their profession or condition,

we

re treated as lesser beings.

He shows Maria standing upright, beside the princess.

She has a thoughtful and controlled expression, 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 portraits.

He never mocked them or caricatured them, and often made them the focal point, as fully fleshed out humans.

In the shadows, this woman is Doña Marcela de Ulloa, the infanta's chaperone,

and she is in mid-conversation with an unidentified bodyguard.

At the rear is Don José Nieto Velázquez, brother of the artist,

and the Queen's Chamberlain. Velasquez had possibly painted him before.

He has paused at the door, pulling back the heavy exterior curtain,

with one foot resting on a step while his weight
is on his other leg on a different step.

As the Queen's attendant he was required to be at hand to
open and close doors for her.

We don't know however if he is coming or going, but the light certainly
pulls us in,

and it looks as if he will usher all of us, out from the created world and into the real world.

In this masterpiece of Illusion,

Velasquez clearly goes beyond the physical confines of space,
by playing with implied spaces, in this case the rest of the palace.

Velasquez himself is pictured
emerging from behind the canvas,

moving into our gaze from the shadows into the light,

as he looks at us in the implied space looking at him in the pictorial space.

He is supremely self-confident and
certainly no subservient courtier.

He is proudly holding the tools of his trade, his Palette is
turned towards us showing its colours

he also holds a mahlstick, used for steadying the hand
when doing close work.

And the long round brushes we know he used which created soft edges rather than hard lines.

His brush is dipped in paint and perhaps he is considering whether to add some finishing touches,

but it is also possible that the first stroke has not yet been applied.

His hand is just a flurry of rapid brush strokes and it would appear to be metamorphosing into his brush,

as his flesh becomes instrument.

It is audacious that a servant, albeit a courtier and Royal favourite,

has given himself greater prominence than his master.

But it is also inconceivable that Philip IV did not give the concept his Blessing in advance.

In the same way the Queen's Chamberlain is opening
up the implied space beyond the picture frame,

the mirror here is reflecting the opposite direction,

forward into the viewer's space.

The reflection is of King Philip IV and Maria of Austria, the
King and Queen.

We know it is a mirror, and not a painting, as everything else is muted and fuzzy,

whereas the image of the king and queen is bathed in light in the beveled mirror giving them an almost divine presence.

That is if we believe the King and Queen are in the same room as the other characters.

The aforementioned historian, Palamino, noted that the mirror which shows the royal couple, was actually a reflection,

not of the real monarchs in the room, but of the canvas Velasquez is working on.

In other words, the couple are not in the room.

This idea is disputed though, as the reflection is not logical.

It has to be said though, this is not the first time Velasquez has painted an image which explores the relationship between reality, reflection, and image,

and which flouts the laws of

Optics. Here too, we see the mirror with this rather blurred reflection.

The constant speculation as to what is happening in this painting,

who is where, and why, is absolutely intentional on the part
of Velasquez.

Whatever the study of perspective or reflection tells us, the Royal presence is still the most plausible explanation for the outward glances of the characters,

and I think that the King and Queen ARE in the room, and the mirror IS a reflection of them at the far end of the room,sitting for Velasquez.

The fact that the Queen's Chamberlain is opening the curtain to the Palace,
sugests 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
his time is up,

and the Manina to the right of the infanta, who is beginning to curtsy, as she
looks towards the couple.

There is a palpable sense of anticipation in the air.

If the king and queen are there, and I think they are, then Velasquez has one more trick up his sleeve.

He has placed the king and queen outside of the pictorial space,

standing exactly where we the commoners
would stand, when we view the paintings.

We are standing right next to King Philipe IV of Spain!

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
portrait.

Let's start with the physicality of the space.

The building was destroyed by fire
in 1734, but the historical plan still exist.

Las meninas was painted in the Cuarto del Príncipe, or the
king's quarters, in the Alcazar in Madrid.

Which is the room depicted in the work.

It was once part of
the apartment occupied by the Crown Prince Don Baltasar Carlos, who had died in 1646.

Once the painting was finished it was planned to be placed in that same room.

An inventory of the room, proved
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 by 9 ft.

The room had these wonderful high ceilings, and the shutters have been placed by Velasquez to
reveal slivers of light exactly where he wants it.

The main light source is from an invisible window
to the right

, and another source is the door at the back, that illuminates the figure and sends a pencil thin beam across the floor.

While Las Meninas is clearly a royal painting, it stands out from
other court paintings,

because the piece was intended to hang in a private room rather than displayed publicly.

It may look formal to us nowadays, but compared to other Royal portraits, Las Meninas is 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
canvas, because it is organised in an orderly composition.

It is balanced perfectly with the
relatively quiet top half against the busy bottom half.

The figures occupy a clear horizontal strip
across the painting,

but it isn't frieze-like, as they are at different depths into the view.

The first layer is the canvas, the dwarf, and the dog.

Then we have the infanta and her maids.

And then Velasquez, the chaperone and the bodyguard.

The layering continues throughout the picture, and beyond
the picture frame.

The painting features several frames; the frame of the room in which they are all standing,

the frames of the paintings on the wall, the frame of the canvas Velasquez is working
on,

the frame of the mirror, and the frame of the door in the background.

These frames provide a
strong linear and geometric theme to the painting.

You get a feel of structure and organisation.

But, a perfect perspective is not essential to our understanding of this painting,

any more than a
perfect understanding of optics.

What is the focal point? Well there are several possibilities.

Just 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
doorway, the infanta, or the reflection of the King and Queen.

It seems at first glance that Velasquez is drawing all our attention to the infanta,

and he has used some clever and subtle techniques to draw
attention to her in such a busy scene.

There is the dress of course, but also she faces towards the main light
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 us towards the infanta.

We do know that this painting was not intended to be on public View
and was really considered a private possession of the king

- for an audience of one.

Which would suggest the focal point is the reflection of the king?

The focus is STILL highly debated
and always wil

l be, but the vanishing point is not. It comes from José Nieto, as he stands in the staircase, more specifically the crook of his arm is the exact vanishing point.

THIS is the key to Velasquez's
mastery of Illusion.

He uses realism, light, and structure, to pull together the disparate elements
in an exquisitely balanced painting.

It is an image so complex, that he could only have achieved it at
this later stage of his life,

with the extensive knowledge he has picked up from a lifetime of painting.

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".

There is a good reason they are there.

If we remember that Velasquez wants desperately to raise his
profession from "Tradesmen" to "Artistic nobility".

They tell the tale of the superiority, the nobility,
and the Divine calling of the artist.

In which Mortals prove themselves more skilled than even
the gods.

Rubens was the most influential Flemish artist of the 17th century,

so by linking himself with Rubens, Velasquez is showing that he had reached the highest tier in European art.

One of the great enigmas in the portrait of Velasquez, is the Red Cross on his tunic.

It is the heraldic symbol of the order of Santiago,

a religious and Military order, founded in the 12th
century.

He had petitioned the king to make him a knight of Santiago for years, to secure Noble status,

citing the link between artistic nobility and social nobility.

But the committee of the order
of Santiago refused - due to his bloodline.

It was rumoured that his grandparents were Jewish converts.

Luckily for Velasquez, as well as being employer and employee, he and Philip IV were close friends,

and he was finally inducted in the order in 1659, a year before his death,

after the king obtained a dispensation from the Pope to overrule doubts as to the artist's blood and trade.

Diego Velasquez, in many ways was unremarkable, apart from the fact he was appointed court painter.

He had one wife, one Friend (the King), and one Studio (the palace), and spent his whole life climbing the social ladder.

His Knighthood is the culmination.

What makes makes this cross in the painting interesting, is that he was knighted a full 3 years after Las meninas was finished,

and a year before he died, which means that the cross was painted on the artist's tunic years after the painting was created.

Tradition had it, that after the artist's death, Philipe IV
himself painted the Red Cross of the Knights of Santiago on the tunic, but that's unlikely.

After the painting was cleaned in the early 1980s it was revealed that the brush work of the cross is uniform with the rest of the surface,

so it was almost certainly Velasquez
who painted the cross.

We can only imagine the immense satisfaction the artist got from adding
the cross to the painting, and therefore rubbing the snobby courtier's noses in the fact that he was now one of them.

Velasquez, who was in essence, born a trades person, died a wealthy Noble.

On his death it is said that the King was heartbroken, and the great friendship that had united them, is evident in three words that the Monarch wrote

in a memorandum after his death: "I am shaken".

Transcript by Margarida Mariz