Las Meninas
Las Meninas (as this work has been known since the XIX century ) or The Family of Philip IV (as described in the 1734 inventory) is considered the masterpiece of Spanish Golden Age painter Diego Velázquez. Finished in 1656, according to Antonio Palomino, a date unanimously accepted by critics, it corresponds to the last stylistic period of the artist, the one of full maturity. It is a painting done in oil on a large canvas made up of three vertically sewn bands of cloth, where the figures in the foreground are represented in natural size. It is one of the most analyzed and commented pictorial works in the world of art.
Although it was described in some detail by Antonio Palomino and praised by various artists and travelers who had the opportunity to see it in the palace, it did not achieve a true international reputation until 1819, when, after the opening of the Prado Museum, it was able to be copied and viewed by a wider audience. Since then, various interpretations of it have been offered, synthesized by Jonathan Brown into three major currents. The realist, chronologically the first, defended by Stirling-Maxwell and Carl Justi, emphasized the fidelity of the "captured moment" with which the painter anticipated the realism of photography, valuing with Édouard Manet and Aureliano de Beruete the technical means used. The publication in 1925 of the article dedicated to Velázquez's bookstore by Sánchez Cantón, with the inventory of the library owned by Velázquez, paved the way for new historical-empirical interpretations based on the recognition of the literary and scientific interests of the painter. The presence in the painter's library of books such as Alciato's Emblems or Cesare Ripa's Iconology stimulated the search for various hidden meanings and symbolic contents in Las Meninas. With Michel Foucault and post-structuralism, the last interpretive current, of a philosophical nature, was born. Foucault discards iconography and its significance and dispenses with historical data to explain this work as a structure of knowledge in which the viewer becomes a dynamic participant in its representation.
The central theme is the portrait of the Infanta Margarita of Austria, placed in the foreground, surrounded by her servants, "las meninas", although the painting also represents other characters. On the left side there is part of a large canvas, and behind it Velázquez himself portrays himself working on it. The artist solved all the problems of composition of the space with great skill, thanks to his mastery of color and his great ease in characterizing the characters. The vanishing point of the composition is near the character who appears in the background opening a door, where the placement of a light bulb demonstrates, once again, the mastery of the painter, who manages to make the viewer's eyes travel all over its representation. A mirror placed in the background reflects the images of King Felipe IV and his wife Mariana of Austria, a means that the painter used to ingeniously publicize what he was painting, according to Palomino, although some historians have interpreted that it was It would deal with the reflection of the kings themselves entering the painting session or, according to others, posing to be portrayed by Velázquez: in this case, the Infanta Margarita and her companions would be visiting the painter in his workshop.
The foreground figures are resolved by loose and long brushstrokes with small touches of light. The lack of definition increases towards the background, the execution being shallower until the figures are left in shadow. This same technique is used to create the hazy atmosphere in the upper part of the painting, which has usually been highlighted as the most successful part of the composition. The architectural space is more complex than in other paintings by the painter: it is the only one where it appears the ceiling of the room. The depth of the environment is accentuated by the alternation of the window jambs and the frames of the paintings hanging on the right wall, as well as the perspective sequence of the chandelier hooks on the ceiling. This twilight setting highlights the strongly lit group of the infanta.
As with most of Velázquez's paintings, the work is neither dated nor signed and its dating is based on information from Palomino and the apparent age of the infanta, born in 1651. It is on display at the Museo del Prado de Madrid, where it entered in 1819, from the royal collection.
Historical and artistic context
Velázquez painted this painting in 1656, the year belonging to the reign of Felipe IV, penultimate monarch of the Habsburg dynasty. It had been more than ten years (1643) since the fall of the valid Count-Duke of Olivares had taken place, and eight years (1648) since the end of the Thirty Years' War with the result of the Peace of Westphalia, whose consequences for Spain and the reign of Felipe IV were a clear decadence. In the year that Velázquez painted Las Meninas, the king was already very old and with evident signs of fatigue, well demonstrated in the work of the same author, Portrait of Felipe IV (between 1656 and 1657). It was in this year of 1657 when England and France agreed to the distribution of the Spanish possessions in Flanders, beginning a harsh attack against the Spanish monarchy, which ended with the defeat of Dunkirk in the battle of the Dunes by Philip IV and the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. After the execution of this painting, in 1660, the marriage between the King of France Louis XIV and the Infanta María Teresa, daughter of Felipe IV, was imposed. Velázquez, due to his position at the Spanish court, had to travel to the Isla de los Faisanes to prepare for this meeting; after this trip, he died in Madrid.
Since the 1650s, Velázquez, due to his position at court and during his second trip to Italy, was commissioned to acquire various pictorial works, among which were some made by Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto., after the return from Italy, in full vital and artistic maturity. In 1652 he was appointed Mayor of the palace, a position of great responsibility, since he was a kind of butler of the king who had to take care of his trips, accommodation, clothes, ceremonial, etc. For this reason he had little time to paint, but even so the few paintings that he produced in this last stage of his life deserve the description of exceptional. In 1656 he made Las Meninas, recognized as his masterpiece. and in 1659 he worked on the decoration of the Hall of Mirrors in the Alcázar together with Carreño and under the supervision of Velázquez. Juan Carreño de Miranda was a friend and protégé of Velázquez although he belonged to a younger generation. Two years after finishing the canvas of Las Meninas, in 1658, the great painters Zurbarán, Alonso Cano and Murillo were in Madrid together with Velázquez. Zurbarán testified and took an active part in the process that finally allowed Velázquez to enter the Order of Santiago.
He was buried on August 6, 1660 with the dress and insignia of a knight of the Order of Santiago, a distinction he so desired to achieve while alive. It is said, without having any official certainty, that it was Felipe IV who, after the death of the artist, added to the painting of Las Meninas the cross of the order on Velázquez's chest.
The title
The painting is described for the first time in the inventory of the Real Alcázar in Madrid in 1666 (one of whose managers was the painter's son-in-law, Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo) described as a "portrait of the empress", alluding to the protagonist, the infanta Margarita Teresa of Austria. The inventory locates the work in the king's office in the summer room:
A painting of quatro bars and a half high and three and a half wide With its golden frame portraying the Empress lady with her ladies and a hand dwarf of Diego belazquez in Mill and five hundred silver ducats, 16,500 rs.
It was cited in a similar way in the inventories of 1686 and 1700, in which to this description was added: "where he portrayed himself painting." In the list of works saved from the Alcázar fire in 1734, it already appeared with the title The Family of Felipe IV, which is the one it had in 1819 when it entered the Museum.
It was in 1843, in the catalog of the works of the Museo del Prado made by Pedro de Madrazo —when his father José de Madrazo was its director—, when he received the name Las meninas, which comes from the description of the painting made by the painter and writer Antonio Palomino (1653-1726) in his work The pictorial museum and optical scale, where he said that "two ladies accompany the infant girl; They are two little girls." With this name, of Portuguese origin, the companions were known, generally from a noble family, who served as ladies-in-waiting to the infantas, until they came of age.
History of the painting
The most complete and primitive information on the painting can be found in the extensive biography full of details that Antonio Palomino dedicated to Velázquez, published in the third volume of the Museo pictórico y escala óptica, entitled The Laureate Picturesque Spanish Parnassus. According to his own confession, Palomino obtained the data from the biographical notes, currently lost, written by Juan de Alfaro, a painter who had been a disciple of Velázquez in the last years of his life, which, among other things, would serve to accurately identify all but one of the portrayed characters.
The painting was finished in 1656, a date that fits the age that the Infanta Margarita appears to be (about five years old). he stayed watching him work, without any protocol. The place where Velázquez worked was a large room on the ground floor of the old Alcázar in Madrid, close to the so-called "Prince's Room" for having been the room of Prince Baltasar Carlos, who died in 1646, ten years before the date of The girls. Some years after Velázquez's death, the main room of the "Prince's Room", which is precisely the place precisely portrayed in Las Meninas, was conditioned as a workshop for chamber painters.
According to the inventory drawn up after the death of Philip IV in 1665, the painting was then in the king's office in the summer room, the place for which it was painted. It was hanging next to a door, and to the right was a large window. It has been deduced that the painter designed the painting expressly for that location, with the light source on the right, and it has even been speculated that it was a visual trick: as if the hall of Las Meninas seemed an extension of the real space, in the place where the painting was exhibited. At that time it was valued at 16,500 reais, a very low price when compared to the value of 52,800 reais that was given to seven mirrors that were kept in the same room, but not so much when compared with other paintings, being with differentiates the most valued of the painter's paintings.
In the fire that destroyed the Alcázar in Madrid (1734), this painting and many other artistic jewels had to be hastily rescued; some were cut out of their frames and thrown out the windows. Las Meninas was saved, but a deterioration (hole) in the infanta's left cheek is attributed to that incident, which, luckily, was restored at the time with good results by the royal painter Juan García de Miranda. The painting reappears in the inventories of the new Palacio de Oriente, until it was transferred to the Prado Museum. The painting was placed in room XV of said museum, next to a large window that provided natural light from the right, as in the original location, an effect that was lost when it was moved to room XII.
During the Spanish Civil War, the painting and other works were evacuated by Jacques Jaujard's team and transferred to Geneva.
In 1984, amid strong controversy, it was restored under the direction of John Brealey, an expert at the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Extensive studies had previously been carried out in collaboration with Harvard University. The restoration was reduced to the removal of layers of varnish that had yellowed and altered the effect of the colors. The current state of the painting is exceptional, especially considering its large size and age.
Description
Characters and other elements
The numbering of the characters corresponds to the one that appears in the illustration.
- 1. Infanta Margarita. The infant, a girl at the time of painting, is the main figure. I was about five years old and around it rotates all the representation of The mens. He was one of the characters of the royal family who most often drew Velázquez, since from a very young age he was engaged in marriage to his motherly uncle and the portraits performed by the painter served, once sent, to inform Leopoldo I about the appearance of his fiancée. Excellent portraits are preserved in the Museum of Art History of Vienna. He painted it for the first time when he had not reached the age of two. This painting is found in Vienna and is regarded as a great work of child painting. Velázquez presents her dressed with inflatable under the gray bass and cream.
- 2. Isabel de Velasco. Daughter of Bernardino López de Ayala and Velasco, VII count of Fuensalida and I count of Colmenar de Oreja. He was born in Colmenar de Oreja on September 6, 1638. In 1649, at the age of 11, she began to serve as a woman of Queen Mariana of Austria, and as a lady of the queen she died for a disease on October 22, 1659. In 1656, when she was portrayed by Velazquez, she was 18 years old. Lamenting his death, the Duke of Montalto, the queen's eldest stable, wrote in a letter to the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo: "Lady Isabel de Velasco, daughter of the count of Fuensalida, the lady of those who looked most at the Palace, died a few days."
- 3. María Agustina Sarmiento de Sotomayor. Daughter of the count of Salvatierra and heir to the Duchy of Abrantes through his mother, Catherine of Alencastre, who would marry later with the count of Peñaranda, great of Spain. It's the other chin with a cut-off suit, the one on the left. It is offering water in a buffoon, small pot of porous and perfumed clay that refreshed the water. The woman starts the gesture of reclining to the royal infant, a gesture of the palace protocol.
- 4. Mari Bárbola (María Barbara Asquín). He entered the Palace in 1651, when the infant was born and always accompanied in his entourage, “with pay, rations and four pounds of snow during the summer”. It's the acondroplastic dwarf we see on the right.
- 5. Nicolasito Pertusato. A dwarf of noble origin of the Duchy of Milan who became the king's chamber help and died at seventy-five years. In the painting it is situated in the first place together with a mast dog, he suffered hypophysial enanism or provided by what appears to be a child of infant age, when he was actually a young adult.
- 6. Marcela de Ulloa, widow of Diego de Peralta Portocarrero. She was in charge of caring for and monitoring all the maidens surrounding Infanta Margarita. It is in the painting, represented with widow's garments and chatting with another character.
- 7. The character next to him, half-in-a-pitch, is the only one whose name does not give Palomino. He only mentions it as a ranger, although more recent studies ensure that it is Don Diego Ruiz Azcona.
- 8. José Nieto Velázquez. He was the king's housekeeper, just as the painter himself was. He served in the palace until his death. In the painting it is located at the bottom, in an open door where the outer light enters. It shows Nieto when he pauses, with his knee bent and feet on different steps. As the art critic Harriet Stone says, you cannot be sure if your intention is to enter or leave the room.
- 9. Diego Velázquez. The painter's self-portrait is standing in front of a large canvas and with the palette and brush in his hands and the chamber help key to the waist. The emblem that looks in the chest was later painted when, in 1658, he was admitted as a gentleman of the Order of Santiago. According to Palomino, "some say that his Majesty himself painted it, for the encouragement of the Teachers of this Most High Art, with so superior Chronist; for as soon as Velazquez painted this painting, the King had not made it this mercy."
- 10 and 11. Philip IV and his wife Mariana of Austria. They appear reflected in a mirror, placed in the center and background of the painting; it seems to indicate that it is precisely the portrait of the monarchs that was painting Velázquez.
In the foreground you can see a dog, a Spanish mastiff, who is in an attitude of rest, without worrying even when he feels the foot of the dwarf Pertusato.
The space represented, as Palomino already indicated, is the main room of the prince's room. Although the Alcázar was destroyed in the fire of 1734, from what the inventories indicate and from the preserved plans of Juan Gómez de Mora, it has been possible to reconstruct the layout of the room represented with remarkable accuracy by Velázquez, with no other change than the mirror, not mentioned in inventories. It is a rectangular room, approximately twenty meters long and more than five meters wide, with windows lining one side. It was decorated with forty paintings, mostly Rubens copies made by Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo of mythological subjects taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and a series of birds, animals and landscapes arranged over the windows. On the back wall were four paintings from the series of Ovidian mythologies as shown by Las Meninas: Prometheus stealing the sacred fire and Vulcan forging the rays of Jupiter on the painter's sides and barely visible, and two other larger ones in the upper part whose motifs can be seen in the semi-darkness of the room: Minerva and Arachne, a copy of Mallet on a composition by Rubens, and Apollo victorious over Pan, derived from an original by Jacob Jordaens executed on a sketch by Rubens for the series of the Tower of the Stop. Those who seek symbolic intentions have fixed Las Meninas, interpreting them in a political sense, assuming in the choice of their hidden affairs allusions to the obedience due to kings and the punishment that failing to comply with it entails, or as a claim of the superiority of the major arts considered as a noble trade, compared to the manual and mechanical trades represented in artisan work. At the time of painting Las Meninas, Velázquez was trying to be admitted as a knight of the Order of Santiago, and consequently to see his ennoblement recognized without hindrance to his trade as a painter, as was already done in other countries —such as Italy—, where monarchs and pontiffs honored painters. Among the books Velázquez left behind when he died was the Noticia de las artes liberales by the lawyer Gaspar Gutiérrez de los Ríos (1600), which in Spain had been the first to extensively defend the liberality of the art of painting, along with other treatises, such as a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's writings or Pliny's Natural History in which also of the nobility of painting. Thus Pliny, referring to the painter Pamphilus, wrote:
... he was the first cultivated painter,[...] in all disciplines, mainly in arithmetic and geometry, without which he said that he could not finish art. [...] this art was admitted as the first degree of liberal education. The truth is that he always had the prestige of being practiced by free men and later by high-ranking characters, and having always been vetoed by slaves. This is why neither in painting nor in sculpture is there famous works made by slaves”.Pliny Naturalis History Lib. XXXV, 77. Review: Victor Nieto Alcaide, Space, Time and Form Series VII, Art History, t. 20-21-2007:UNED p. 63.
Technique
For José Gudiol, Las Meninas represents the culmination of his pictorial style in a continuous process of simplifying his technique, prioritizing visual realism over the effects of drawing. Velázquez in his artistic evolution understood that to accurately capture any form, only certain brushstrokes were required. Simplicity was his goal in his mature years and Las Meninas is where he best reflected these achievements.
In Las Meninas, its balanced composition stands out, its order. The lower half of the canvas is filled with characters in contained dynamism while the upper half is imbued with a progressive penumbra of stillness. The paintings hanging on the walls, the mirror, the open door in the background are a succession of rectangular shapes that form a counterpoint to the subtle games of color caused by the attitudes and movements of the characters. The composition is articulated by repeating the shape and the proportions of the two main trios (Velázquez-Agustina-Margarita on the one hand and Isabel-Maribarbola-Nicolasito on the other), in a very thoughtful position that did not require adjustments and modifications on the fly, as Velázquez used to do in his way of painting, full of regrets, rectifications, corrections and adjustments as she progressed in the execution of a painting. This chosen layout and the harmony of the tones achieve that wonderful naturalness that gives it that look of an improvised sequence caught fleetingly.
Velázquez was a master in the treatment of light. He illuminated the painting with three separate light bulbs, not counting the small reflection in the mirror. The most important is the one that affects the foreground from a window to our right that cannot be seen, that illuminates the infanta and her group, making her the main focus of attention. The wide space behind it gradually fades into shadows until, in the background, a new, small spotlight bursts in from another right side window whose glow falls on the ceiling and the rear area of the room. The third source of light is the strong backlight from the open door in the front part of the background where the figure of José Nieto is cut out and from where the light is projected from the bottom of the painting towards the viewer, thus forming a diagonal that crosses it in perpendicular sense. The interweaving of this frontal light from the inside out and the transversal ones alluded to, forms different luminous games of various inclinations from top to bottom or from right to left, creating an illusion of superimposed planes in depth of great credibility. This complex luminous pattern fills the space with shadows and backlights, inviting the viewer to look at every detail moving throughout the painting.
Velázquez systematically seeks to neutralize the nuances, highlighting only a few elements so that the chromatic intensity does not predominate in general. Thus, in the main group of characters, on an ocher layer, only some gray and yellowish nuances stand out in contrast to the dark grays of the background and the upper part of the painting. Light and expressive touches of black and red plus the pinkish whiteness of the carnations complete the harmonious effect. Shadows are used purposefully and without hesitation, including black. This idea of neutralizing nuances predominates in his art, both when he defines the figure against the background with a few and precise black lines, as well as when he obtains the true quality of the wood on the paneled door in the background, or when he sows small lines white the yellowish skirt of the infanta or suggesting without even trying to draw her light blond hair.
The painting is painted in Velázquez's latest manner, the one he used since his return from his second trip to Italy. In this last stage, a greater dilution of the pigments can be seen, a thinning of the pictorial layers, an application of the carefree, daring and free brushstroke. As Quevedo said, a "painter of distant spots" or in "the tradition of Titian", what in Spain was called "painting with blots". Las Meninas was done quickly and intuitively according to Velázquez's habit of painting the motif first, live, of doing it directly alla prima, with spontaneity. In this In the last decade of his life, Velázquez mastered pictorial technique and aerial perspective, which he transmitted in Las Meninas and in his probable next great work: Las hilanderas. In both works he achieved the feeling that there is a space of "air" between the characters that blurs them while uniting them all, taking to its extreme the technique of loose and light brushstrokes that he had begun to use in his period. intermediate and is found, for example, in Prince Baltasar Carlos on horseback.
The technical quality of the painting, with the treatment of the fine texture and the compact brushstrokes applied with great mastery, has made possible its good state of conservation, despite the time elapsed since its execution, with hardly any cracking being observed. The original measurements were slightly retouched in a first restoration, in which the painting was canvased again. On the upper edge and the right lateral side, it is possible to detect the marks left by the nails that fixed the canvas to the frame; it was trimmed on the left side and a small fold was made to make the new fastening possible. It appears that very little of the shoreline was lost.
X-ray studies carried out in the Museo del Prado and the technical analysis of Carmen Garrido have shown that Velázquez made the painting directly on the canvas without previous sketches: through the application of color spots he covered large parts of the irregularly shaped fabric, in the manner of the so-called Venetian School headed by Giorgione. The corrections or pentimenti were multiple, the most notable being those that affected the painter himself, who in a first stage presented himself with his face turned in profile towards the Infanta Margarita; The infanta's right hand was also corrected and placed lower than in her initial position; other regrets are found in the mirror in the background, where the lace of the king's head was appreciated with a sketchy technique and with denser pigments than that suggested by the almost invisible figure of the queen. The outlines of the figures were made with long, loose strokes, followed by quick, brief strokes to highlight the lights on the faces, hands, and details of the clothing. The speed of execution can be seen in the decorative details.
Velázquez used a cold range of colors and a sober and not extensive palette. When applying the brushstrokes, he barely touches the canvas, achieving a fine texture, with only a few points where the somewhat thicker brushstrokes are more noticeable. According to what Delacroix said, he used a "clear filling and at the same time rich in nuances." The characters are treated in a naturalistic way, be it the menina Agustina Sarmiento offering the pottery with water or the Infanta Margarita herself. All the characters in the painting are introduced in a scene where the light treats the atmosphere as a point of union between them.
Velázquez used lead targets with almost no mixes in various points of the painting, such as the shirts, the cuffs of Mari Bárbola or the right sleeve of Agustina Sarmiento; he did it with a quick and determined touch that achieves the reflection of the clothes and ornaments, as in the case of the Infanta Margarita or in the painter's own shirt. In the infanta's hair and her ornaments, the art of the master's brushstrokes can also be appreciated. A similar treatment is observed in the four female figures in the foreground; the dresses denote the category and the class of fabric of each one of them. In the case of Nicolasito Pertusato, the definition is more blurred. Velázquez used touches of lapis lazuli especially in Mari Bárbola's dress, and he did so in order to achieve reflections in the deep color of this dress. The characters reflected in the mirror are drawn more quickly and with a sketchy technique.
Theories about the plot of the play
Despite the many studies that art historians have dedicated to finding a meaning to the canvas, Las Meninas continues to raise questions that are difficult to answer. The first problem is the very difficulty that exists to establish the pictorial genre to which they belong, since it does not adhere to any of the traditional genres. It is a portrait whose protagonist, according to the first descriptions who have arrived from the painting is the Infanta Margarita with some members of her entourage. But it is not a conventional group portrait, as something seems to be happening in it, which is only suggested by the direction of gazes of six of the nine characters towards the outside of the painting, that is, towards the place where the viewer is. The apparent lightness of the narrated anecdote, its own lack of definition, means that it cannot be considered as a conventional history painting either. As a baroque work it could hide several overlapping messages. «Baroque is a dynamic art. Action and 'pathos' they determine their creations and try to include the observer as well". In this case, however, the intended audience seems to be unique: the king, who disposes of the work in a reserved space for private use in his bathroom summer, and that would be doubly represented, in the reflection of the mirror and as a recipient of glances. In this sense, the spontaneous and apparently casual action could be considered a mere whim directed privately to the king by his chamber painter, when he had already achieved everything at court and the king, overwhelmed by political chores and aged, he could find comfort both in the portrait of the infanta, which was his "joy", and in the mastery of his painter.
The casual appearance of the narrated event actually hides a complex study of the relationships between the characters represented, which has led to the search for a plot. Jonathan Brown suggested that the scene would represent the moment when the Infanta Margarita, arriving at Velázquez's studio to see the artist at work, asks for water, which is offered to her by the menina on the left, at which point the king and queen also enter, reflecting themselves. their figures in the mirror on the back wall. At this apparition, the action stops and those who have already noticed the presence of the kings, not all of them, direct their gazes towards them. For Thomas Glen, the sequence of events is slightly different: the kings have been sitting for a while, posing before the painter who portrays them in the presence of the princess when they decide to end the session. At that moment, their eyes turn towards them, Velázquez interrupts his work and Pertusato wakes up the dog that is to accompany his mistress. The queen's lodger, opening the back door in compliance with her palatial duties, indicates that the royal persons are preparing to cross the represented space. Brown himself now seems to accept this narration, which is the one that currently enjoys the greatest consensus and the one that allows for the most satisfactory explanation, according to the rules of perspective, of what is reflected in the mirror.
Although, in the opinion of Martin Kemp, the composition of the space in Las Meninas is "a subtle challenge to previous scientific naturalism, mainly Italian", since the painter would have proposed to give an idea of the process of vision through exclusively pictorial resources —stains and lights— attentive to appearance rather than arid geometry, orthogonal lines are enough to locate the vanishing point in the hole in the back door, close to Nieto's elbow. The mirror thus reflects, as Antonio Palomino already warned, the obverse of the painting in which Velázquez works, what we do not see: the double portrait of the monarchs under a curtain, even though Velázquez never painted a painting of these characteristics. If, on the contrary, the mirror did not reflect the surface of the canvas, but the kings themselves, these being located in the point of view outside the painting, occupying the same place that the viewer occupies, so that the focal point is located just in front of to the mirror, the vanishing point should be located in accordance with the rules of perspective in the very center of the mirror. This would also resolve the question of what he is painting, a question that has intrigued many researchers, and to which has been answered than the painting itself of Las Meninas, with which it coincides in the primitive frame and in the approximate measurements, or his own self-portrait, assuming a game of crossed mirrors, which seems to deny the fact that that the background squares are not shown inverted.
Attempts to discover a hidden meaning beyond the pure appearance of what is represented have also been diverse. The first to formulate a hypothesis of this kind was Charles de Tolnay, who interpreted Las Meninas as a claim to the nobility of painting, a burning issue in Spain in the XVII and for which painters had been fighting for a long time, suing against the payment of the alcabala, a consumption tax that taxed sales and equated painters with Taking as a starting point the two paintings of mythological subjects hanging on the back wall, copies by Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo of two canvases that hung in the Torre de la Parada, Minerva and Arachne, according to Rubens, and Apollo and Marsyas, original by Jordaens, whose issues —the competition between two forms of art, one embodied in a god and the other in a mortal— he interpreted as an exaltation of art over craftsmanship, Tolnay highlighted that Velázquez represented himself outside the composition, as if imagining it, forging a Platonic idea of it, before beginning to handle brushes, a mechanical trade. With some nuances, Tolnay's social interpretation has found numerous followers, among them Jonathan Brown, for whom the matter of the paintings would lack interest, since the painting reflected the exact layout of the room, and the exaltation of the art of painting would come from the presence of kings: the king exalts the painter by going to see him work in his workshop —Palomino effectively alludes to those visits by kings to their painters, and not only on this occasion, as a sign of their utmost appreciation— and, for his part, the painter maintains decorum by not painting with his lords, but before the reflection that the mirror projects of them. In the care taken by the painter to self-portrait himself in the exercise of his duties as chamber painter without falling into the "daring" of becoming a protagonist, painting himself alongside his masters, he has Fernando Marías affected, for whom Las Meninas would be a conceptist capricho through which the painter ingeniously asked the king himself for permission “to portray a monarch who did not want to be portrayed”.
A different interpretation, in a political key, was proposed by Xavier de Salas seconded by Enriqueta Harris, emphasizing the role of the Infanta Margarita, who would occupy that place as heiress to the crown, «the exclusive hope at that time of perpetuate the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs". Thesis amplified by Manuela Mena, who interprets in an emblematic key, as a "mirror of princes" intended for the education of the future queen, some elements visible on the canvas with others that would only be discovered in x-rays. Since the crown actually corresponded to the older sister, María Teresa, daughter of Felipe IV's first marriage with Isabel de Borbón, such a hypothesis needs to explain her exclusion from the line of succession, which would be justified by the promise of marriage with Louis XIV, King of France. However, this marriage, although long requested by the French court, was not arranged until 1659, after the birth of a male heir, Felipe Próspero, while in 1656 other more convenient marriages for the infanta with members of the Austrian family were discussed., so that she would not be excluded from the line of succession.
Very numerous are the approaches to Las Meninas in an iconological key, headed by the studies of J. A. Emmens and Santiago Sebastián, with which they seek to give an explanation of the work as a whole from the allegorical interpretations of its components, taking as a starting point the presence in Velázquez's library of some iconological and emblematic books, such as the Iconologia overo Descrittione dell'Imagini universali by Cesare Ripa. Thus, the dwarf Mari Bárbola, emblem of Envy for Emmens, has a bag of coins in her hands that would symbolize Greed. The dwarf Nicolasito Pertusato, who bothers the dog, would be Evil, or Madness, bothering Fidelity, since Evil appears in iconographic treatises as a character dressed in red, and the dog is, among others, a symbol of Fidelity and alert to dangers. The risk of such explanations for Julián Gállego is that they end up reducing the interpretation of the painting to a charade, or as Brown says, that incidental motifs are taken as emblems, "attributing to objects and characters a meaning that they may not possess", carried only of the subjectivity of the interpreter.
Among various books on scientific subjects, Velázquez had a treatise on astronomy and cosmography, such as Antonio Nájera's Suma astrológica, and three glasses to contemplate the stars. This has given rise to speculation about the astrological symbology of Las Meninas. In this sense, it is argued that joining with an imaginary line the heart, or the heads, of what would be the five main figures: Velázquez, the menina Agustina Sarmiento, the infanta Margarita, the menina Isabel de Velasco and the lodger José Nieto, You can reconstruct the drawing of the constellation Corona Borealis, whose central star is called Margarita Coronae, like the infanta who also occupies the central place in the painting. Furthermore, drawing a circle between these characters and adding lines towards the secondary characters would give the sign of Capricorn, which was the zodiac sign of Queen Mariana of Austria. Finally, it is said that the light that enters from the windows coincides with the date of December 23, 1656, the date of the queen's birthday.
Stressing the difficulty of interpretation, López Rey concludes that whatever subject Velázquez is painting on his canvas, the truth is that he did not want to show it. On the one hand, the infanta and her group are looking from different points towards that external space that Velázquez is painting. On the other hand, the viewer is attracted by the intense figures in the foreground and by the luminous images of the kings reflected in the mirror. A painting within another painting, underlining the division between painting and reality.
Golden section and analysis of the work
Many Renaissance artists used the golden section in their drawings, including the great master Leonardo da Vinci. Already in the year 1509 the mathematician Luca Pacioli published the book De Divina Proportione and in 1525 Albrecht Dürer published Instruction on the measurement with a ruler and compass of plane and solid figures, where he describes how to draw the spiral based on the golden section with a ruler and compass, which is known as "Dürer's spiral". Velázquez, in the golden composition of his painting Las Meninas, he orders it with the aforementioned spiral, whose center is located on the chest of the Infanta Margarita, —various authors have mentioned the possible use of the use of the golden ratio by Velázquez— thereby marking the visual center of maximum interest and meaning symbolic of the place reserved for the chosen ones, as was the tradition in Europe, for the monarch to occupy the central and privileged place in the ceremonies. It must not be forgotten that at the time the painting was created, the Infanta Margarita was the most indicated person as a successor to the throne, since Felipe IV did not have any male children at that time.
The vanishing point of the perspective is behind the door where José Nieto is; precisely, that is where the eye goes in search of the exit from the painting; the great luminosity existing at this point causes the gaze to be fixed in that place.
In Las Meninas the painting can be structured into different spaces. The upper half of the work is dominated by an empty space, in which Velázquez paints the air. There is also a virtual space where the painter looks and where the kings or the spectators are supposed to be. Another important space is the vanishing point at the bottom of the painting, very bright, where a character flees from the intimacy of the moment. A fourth space is the small mirror that reflects the kings; and finally, there is the space delimited by the golden light that can be seen in the figures of the infanta, the meninas, the dwarf and the dog. They are real and virtual spaces that make up the fantastic reality of the painting.
Mirror and reflected scenes
The spatial structure and the position of the mirror are arranged in such a way that it seems that Felipe IV and Mariana were in front of the princess and her companions, with the observer of the canvas. According to Janson, not only are the Infanta and her servants present to distract the royal couple, but Velázquez's attention is drawn to them as he paints their portrait. Although they can only be seen in mirror reflection, the depiction of the couple The real occupies a central place in the painting, both because of the social hierarchy and because of the composition of the painting. The viewer's position in relation to them is uncertain. The question is to know if the spectator is close to the royal couple or if he replaces them and contemplates the scene with his own eyes; It is a question that generates controversy. The second hypothesis is to know what is the objective of the gaze of Velázquez, the Infanta and Mari Bárbola, who looks directly towards the observer of the painting.
In Las Meninas the queen and king are supposed to be outside the painting, and their reflection in the mirror places them inside the pictorial space. The mirror, set against the dreary back wall, shows what is there: the queen, the king, and—in the words of Harriet Stone—the generations of onlookers who have come to take the couple's place in the room. painting. An alternative hypothesis by historian H. W. Janson is that the mirror reflects Velázquez's canvas, a canvas that he already has painted with the representation of the kings.
Las Meninas was probably influenced by Jan van Eyck's painting, The Arnolfini Marriage. When Velázquez was painting Las Meninas, Van Eyck's painting was part of the collection of Philip IV's palace and Velázquez was undoubtedly familiar with this work.In The Arnolfini Marriage Similarly, there is a mirror at the back of the pictorial scene, which reflects two characters from the face and a couple from the back. Although these characters are too small to be able to be identified, one hypothesis is that one of the images corresponds to the painter, just at the moment of starting to paint. According to Lucien Dällenbach:
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The mirror of The mens is in front of the observer, as in Van Eyck's painting. But the procedure here is more realistic: the mirror, at the back, is not convex, but flat. While in Van Eyck's picture the objects and characters are recomposed in a space deformed and condensed by the curvature of the mirror, Velázquez refuses to play with the laws of perspective: for whoever is in front of the picture, he projects on the mirror the perfect doubles of the king and queen. In addition, it shows the characters that are observed by the painter and, at the same time, through the mirror, you can see the individuals who enter and direct the attention to Velázquez, leading to a reciprocity of looks that brings as a consequence the image comes out of its frame and invites the visitor to enter into the fabric.
The mirror in the painting is about a foot tall, and the images of the king and queen are intentionally blurred. Jonathan Miller asks the question: "What should we think of the blurred faces of the king and queen in the mirror? It is unlikely that it was due to an imperfection in the optics of the mirror; in fact, you want to show this effect of the image of the king and queen. A similar effect is present in the Venus in the Mirror, the only one of the nudes painted by Velázquez that has been preserved; the character's face vanishes in the mirror, beyond all realism. The angle of the mirror is so strong that "although it is usually described as looking into it, it is disconcertingly looking back at us". In a humorous way, Miller also comments that, in addition to the mirror represented in Las Meninas, we can imagine the existence of another mirror that does not appear in the painting, without which it would have been difficult for Velázquez to have painted himself. himself, self-portraiting.
Many aspects of Las Meninas are related to other works from Velázquez, where the same resources are used and played with. According to López-Rey, apart from The Arnolfini couple, the painting that comes closest to Las Meninas is Christ in the house of Marta and María, a canvas that Velázquez painted in 1618, some forty years earlier, in Seville; In this painting you can detect an image in the background as if it were a window that overlooks another room, or it can also be a mirror.
In 1964, before the restoration of Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, numerous art historians saw the scene that seems embedded above, to the right of the painting, as if it were reflected in a mirror, or as if it were another picture hanging on the wall. This debate has partially continued after the restoration, although according to the National Gallery in London, where the canvas is displayed, Christ and his companions are visible only through a window into an adjoining room. Dresses that appear in both rooms are also different; the dresses of the main scene are contemporary with Velázquez, while those of the scene where Christ is found use the traditional iconographic conventions for biblical scenes. In Las Hilanderas, a painting probably painted a year after that of Las Meninas, two scenes from Ovid are represented: in the foreground, with contemporary dresses, and in the rear with old clothes. According to Sira Dambe, "in this canvas, the aspects of representation are treated in a similar way to those of Las meninas ".
Opinions
- The Baroque painter Luca Giordano in 1700 said it was the "theology of painting".
- The writer Théophile Gautier, in the centuryXIXAt the sight of the painting, he exclaimed the famous phrase: "Where is the painting?"
- Thomas Lawrence, one of the best English retractors of the century generationXIXHe described it as the "philosophy of painting".
- Stirling-Maxwell, in the book Annals of the Artists of Spain of the year 1848, compares “... the realism of The mens with a photograph, an advance of the invention of Daguerre».
- The great painter of Impressionism Édouard Manet, after a stay in Madrid in 1865 and visiting for a few days the Museo del Prado, expressed his surprise in front of the work of the Spanish painter with which he identified himself by the subtlety of his chromatism and the key to modern art that opens with his work. With this impression he wrote to his friend, the painter Henri Fantin-Latour, making the following comment: "Velázquez, alone justifies the journey. The painters of all the schools around him, at the Madrid museum, seem simple apprentices. He is the painter of the painters."
- José Ortega y Gasset, in his book Papers on Velázquezhe writes:The theme of Velázquez is always the instant of a scene. Note that if a scene is real it consists, by force, of moments in each of which the movements are different».
- Raffaello Causa, in the monograph dedicated to Diego Velázquez de la Pinacoteca de los Genios of 1965, describes The mens In this way: “A series of portraits gathered in an evocative frame of ensemble, which is like a wide open window and, at once, to the rigorous label of the palace. All the characters that surround Infanta Margarita have been identified; on the left is the self-portrait of the painter."
- Also in a philosophical modality is the interpretation published in 1966 by Michel Foucault in his text on The mensas an introductory essay in your book Les mots et les choses. Foucault considers painting as a knowledge structure that invites the observer to participate in representation within another representation.
- During a joint visit by Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau to the Museo del Prado, they were asked what they would save in the event of a fire at the Museum, Cocteau answered "the fire", while Dalí said "the air of the Museum." The mens».
- In 1980, critics Snyder and Cohn observed:
Velázquez wanted the image projected in the mirror to depend on the rest of the painted fabric. Why did you want this? The luminous image of the mirror seems to reflect the king and the queen, but does something else, goes against natura. The image reflected is just a reflection. A reflection of what? Of the owner of the true work; of the art of Velázquez.
Influence of Las Meninas by Velázquez
Although praiseworthy reviews of Las Meninas have been known since the same XVII century, in reality Until the 19th century it was an unknown work outside the Madrid Court and did not achieve international fame until its exhibition at the Museo del Prado, inaugurated in 1819. Until then it had remained confined to royal palaces with restricted access: first in the Alcázar in Madrid and then in the new palace erected in its place, the current Palacio de Oriente.
Velázquez's first follower was undoubtedly his son-in-law Juan Bautista del Mazo, painter to Felipe IV in 1661. In the portrait of the Infanta Margarita of Austria from 1666, in the back plane you can see the placement of Carlos II and the dwarf Mari Bárbola in a scene similar to that of Las Meninas by Velázquez.
The setting and arrangement of the various elements of his work The Family of the Painter Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo, in which he represents his entire family and service personnel, undoubtedly refers to Las Meninas.
Luca Giordano, known in Spain as Lucas Jordán, in 1700, after his trip to Madrid, where he admired the painting Las Meninas, made a painting with the title Homage to Velázquez which is kept in the National Gallery in London.
Las meninas had a limited diffusion through prints until well into the XIX century, and The first artist to reproduce the painting in engraving was Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, who recognized himself as strongly influenced by Velázquez's painting. When he went to work at the Spanish court, he had access to the court's painting collections, and in 1778 he published a series of etchings in which he reproduced paintings by Velázquez. Around 1785 he made an engraving of Las meninas , but he was not satisfied and decided not to publish it with the rest of the series.The plate had to be discarded (although seven prints of it survive). The other engraving of Las Meninas prior to 1800 was made in Paris by Pierre Audouin in 1799, for a series on the Spanish Royal Collection that was being published in Madrid. But this series failed commercially and Audouin's engraving was barely distributed until decades later.
The influence of Velázquez and Las Meninas on Goya continued over time. In 1800 Goya made the portrait of The Family of Carlos IV where, in an act of homage to the painter of Las Meninas, Goya portrays himself looking towards the viewer to the left of the royal family, in this painting approaches the photographic snapshot, as he had already done in the painting The family of the infant don Luis de Borbón from the year 1784, in which he also portrays himself on the left side like Velazquez.
The United States painter, John Singer Sargent, was influenced in his portraits by Velázquez. He visited the Prado in 1879 and painted a literal copy of the painting, which has been acquired for the future Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles promoted by filmmaker George Lucas [1]. But Sargent's work that most reveals his debt to the great master is the painting The daughters of Edward Darley Boit , made in 1882, where he tries to capture the air of the interior as in The meninas . It is preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
In his latest works, Salvador Dalí was getting closer and closer to the great masters he always admired, among whom was Velázquez. In 1973, his painting Unfinished stereoscopic painting , achieves the multiplication of space through a mirror where his self-portrait also appears in a clear allusion to Las Meninas .
A large number of artists have made works based on Las Meninas, therefore it can be said that their works have been influenced by Velázquez, among which we highlight: Richard Hamilton, Cristóbal Toral, Antonio Saura, Equipo Crónica, and sculptors have also joined forces with related works such as Jorge Oteiza in 1958 with the sculpture Homage to the Meninas, Las Meninas from the series Entertainment in the Prado by Pablo Serrano or Las Meninas by Manolo Valdés. All these artists have been gathered for a major exhibition at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona under the name Oblidant Velázquez Las Meninas in 2008.
Famous is Picasso's phrase said in 1950 to his friend Sabartés in a conversation about art:
If anyone could copy The Meninas, totally with good faith, upon reaching a certain point and if the one who copied them were me, I would say, "What if I put this one a little more to the right or to the left? I'd try to do it my way, forgetting Velázquez.
Picasso, seduced by Las Meninas, which had already caught his attention when he was young, on August 17, 1957, he began working in Cannes on the production of a series with 58 interpretations of the work of Las meninas, which finished in December of the same year. In the first performance he painted the whole scene without color, only with greys; He represented Velázquez with a much larger size, his head reaches the ceiling and the cross of the order of Santiago stands out on his chest. The faces of the meninas Agustina Sarmiento and Isabel de Velasco are made with angular lines that contrast with the round faces of the Infanta Margarita and the dwarves Mari Bárbola and Pertusato. Marcela de Ulloa and her companion Diego Ruiz Azcona shows them as ghostly characters placed inside some kind of coffin. He highlights the ceiling hooks that in Velázquez go almost unnoticed, they are simply hooks for the lamps and in Picasso's version he highlights them giving the sensation of a torture room. Another variant is the opening of the shutters of all the windows of the palatine room. It is practically cubist in style. On December 30, 1957, Picasso concluded the series of Las Meninas with the portrait of Isabel de Velasco.
With the project that the Prado Museum launched in 2009 facilitating access to the painting of Las Meninas in mega high resolution through the Internet, between 2010 and 2011 Félix de la Concha made the work Las Meninas from an artificial light. It is a meticulous copy that he made from Iowa City, United States. Painted in oil in 140 fragments, united they reconstruct the real size of the painting of 318 x 276 centimeters; to which 30 centimeters were added on its left side that recreates the lost part of the original on that side of the painting due to the Alcázar fire in 1734, giving a new reading to the composition. His work also highlights with its fragmentation the artificiality of reproduction as a way of seeing works of art today. Las Meninas from artificial light have been on public display since 2018 at the NH hotel in Zamora.
In 2004, video artist Eve Sussman filmed 89 Seconds at the Alcázar, a high-definition tableau of video inspired by Las Meninas. The work is an 89-second reconstruction of the moment when the royal family and their courtiers would have come right up to the exact configuration of Velázquez's painting. Sussman had a team of 35 people, including an architect, a designer, a choreographer, a costume designer, actors, actresses, and a film crew.
The Irish writer Oscar Wilde was inspired by Las Meninas to write his story The Infanta's Birthday.[citation needed]
The playwright Antonio Buero Vallejo wrote the play Las meninas in 1959, which premiered at the Teatro Español in Madrid on December 9, 1960, under the direction of José Tamayo.
Kingston Lacy's Meninas
A reduced version of the painting is kept in the country palace of Kingston Lacy, in Dorset, England (United Kingdom). Various experts such as Matías Díaz Padrón insist that it could be a "modello" painted by Velázquez before the original in the Prado Museum, perhaps so that it would be approved by the king, although it shows the painting in its final state, without the changes seen on x-rays. Most experts therefore believe that it is a copy without the nuances and subtleties of the painter, as in the reflection of the kings in the mirror, absent in the copy, which in any case is of great interest since no other of these is known. said painting before the XIX century.
This copy was inventoried as such already in the XVII century in the collection of the Marquis del Carpio and later became owned by Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos in the time of Ceán Bermúdez, whose writings on this work were not published until 1885. Its composition is almost identical to the original and, under the color, pencil lines can be seen that draw the oval of the face of the infanta, as well as the eyes and hair. It is made with lighter colors and the light is also less strong.