21/09/2017
Inspiration at the moment ✨Velázquez-Las Meninas / Picasso- Las Meninas✨
1656/ 1957.
Oil on canvas, 318 x 276 cm.
This is one of Velázquez`s largest paintings and among those in which he made most effort to create a complex and credible composition that would convey a sense of life and reality while enclosing a dense network of meanings. The artist achieved his intentions and Las Meninas became the only work to which the writer on art Antonio Palomino devoted a separate section in his history of Spanish painters of 1724, entitling it In which the most illustrious work by Don Diego Velázquez is described. Since then the painting has never lost its status as a masterpiece. From Palomino we know that it was painted in 1656 in the Cuarto del Príncipe in the Alcázar in Madrid, which is the room seen in the work. He also identifies most of the figures of the court servants grouped around the Infanta Margarita, who is attended by two of the Queen`s meninas or maids-ofhonour: María Agustina Sarmiento and Isabel de Velasco. In addition to that group, we also see the artist himself working on a large canvas, the dwarves Mari Bárbola and Nicolasito Pertusato, the latter provoking a mastiff, and the lady-in-waiting Marcela de Ulloa next to a guardadamas (attendant), with the chamberlain José Nieto standing in the doorway in the background. Reflected in the mirror are the faces of Philip IV and Mariana of Austria, the Infanta`s parents who are watching the scene taking place. The figures inhabit a space that is modelled not just through the laws of scientific perspective but also through aerial perspective. In the definition of this space the multiplication of the light sources plays an important role. @ Museo Nacional del Prado
