Great Art Explained: Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez

Las menas 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 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 bod gones

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 op C 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 ATT attention to detail

he gave workers a gravitas

in his paintings Diego

Rodriguez dilva I Velasquez

was born in 1599

in Seville to a family with plenty of intellect

but little financial means

precociously talented he began a six-year apprenticeship

when he was 12 years old

with the painter Francisco

Pacho learning classical techniques of painting

but the young artist quickly moved moved away from P'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 p sson

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

2 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 Manas

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 teacher

you see today in the pra

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 to 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 theater 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 zaran Murillo and

cantes 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 ailments 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 Bon 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 Maria Anna 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 Manas 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

juanda Bara 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

I 10th 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

tropo Vero two truthful

the influence of contemporary

Italian artists can be seen in velasca's

Mastery of perspective and his rendering of the male nude

in this large canvas he painted

while in Rome it was tan and Peter Paul Rubin

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 tan 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 Tian and rubben

not only in its Simplicity

of pose but also in its depiction of the King as a restrained

and powerful ruler vasquez's

portrait however is livelier

more elegant and uses a lighter palet

and doesn't rely on a highly charged

background the Flemish painter rubben

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 kiar skuro

to be looser in his brush work

and to adopt a brighter palette color

rubben was not only a successful

painter but he was also an important

Diplomat who had been knighted

despite his humble background

the ambitious phasers saw rubben

as a role model

and through him he found someone he could identify

with it was tian's late works that inspired

both rubben and Velasquez

Tian 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 Sanchez coo and Antonis

Moore who were in The Royal collection

and would also be important to have Vas

helped Philipe IV Forge a calculated

image of power and

piety probably the biggest influence on L Manas

though was a painting from two centuries

earlier the arnoldi portrait

by Yan van Ike

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 menas the arnoldini

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 kote

by Miguel de santes

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 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

Vasquez 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

gray ground which allowed for a much wider tonal range

greater luminosity and a general

silvery range of color

this was unusual at the time as most canvases were primed using dark

colors he would paint ala Prima

or wet on wet where layers of wet paint are

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

sleeve where although it is mostly wet on wet

areas of highlights have been dabbed on later in thick impasto

to create texture with Velasquez

you are always aware that you are looking at paint

he doesn't try to hide his brush marks

quite the reverse by the time he came round to painting l minina

us 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 kiar skuro

the extreme contrast of light and dark when we talk about Velasquez

and comparisons are often made with Caravaggio

he painted his most technically

carav I like picture

christed after the flagellation

early on but later he used a more subtle variation

of kiar skuro still using light to direct our vision but more subtly

as we can see

when we look at Las meninas

in grayscale Velasquez uses a dark color palette for Las Minas

mostly neutral colors and quite limited

and yet he manages to get a broad range of tones

with just whites Blues

yellows ochers and small touches of red that help draw your eyes around the

painting towards key points of

interest Basquez even lets us know

which colors he used as the palette

that the painter holds in his left hand as the very pigments

he used on Las

Manas between 1640 and 1660

Velasquez mostly painted single

portraits the composition and structure of Las Manas

was extremely complicated and with so many characters

it's really like the staging of a piece of of theater or performance

art it needed to be carefully planned out with every character seen

as well as being seen

in Velasquez his hands they are fully

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 vasquez'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 Manas

or ma in Waiting

Maria Austina sento who is passing her water in terra cotta pots

so it could be summer

and Isabelle 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 center 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 Philip 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

as a the 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 Nicholas perus an Italian dwarf and Court Jester

next to him is the Austrian

dwarf Maria babola 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 Prof profession or condition were 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 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 Don machello

the infanta chaperon and she is in midc conversation

with an unidentified bodyguard

at the rear is Don Jose nto

Velasquez 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 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 pallet is turned towards us showing

its colors he also holds a Mal stick 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 favorite

has given himself greater prominence

than his master but it is all 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 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

leveled 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 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 curon to the Palace suggests that the royal couple are preparing

to exit this would also explain the infanta's

Gaze towards her parents

Velasquez who seems to be peeping out of the darkness

realizing 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 menas

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 quto Del prpe

or the king's quarters

in the alkazar in Madrid

which is the room depicted in the work

it was once part of the apartment

occupied by the Crown Prince Don balazar

Carlos who had died

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 menas

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 menas is fairly spontaneous

casual and relaxed there is a lot in this painting

people animals Reflections paintings on the wall

textures other objects and movement

and yet there is a cohesion to the canvas

because it is organized

in an orderly composition

it is balanced perfectly

with a relatively quiet top half against the busy bottom

half the figures occupy a clear horizontal

strip across the painting

but it isn't freezlike

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 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

organization 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

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 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 will be

but the vanishing point is not

it comes from joseo

as he stands in the

staircase more specifically the the crook of his arm is the exact vanishing

point this is the key

Velasquez's Mastery of Illusion

uses realism light and structure

to pull together the disperate

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 Ruben

Velasquez's role model and show scenes

from ID's metamorphosis 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 Pro themselves more skilled

than even the gods

rubben was the most influential

Flemish artist of the 17th

century so by linking himself with rubben

Velasquez is showing that he had reached the highest tier in European

art one of the great enigmas

in the portrait of Vasquez

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 rumored 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

into 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

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 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 means that the cross was painted on the artist's

tunic years after the painting was created

tradition had it that after the artist

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 AR is 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