Las Meninas

This seventeenth century Spanish painting, entitled "Las Meninas" (The Maids of Honor) is perhaps one of the most influential and highly analyzed paintings in the world. Diego Velazquez, who is shown in the painting, is one of the most famous Spanish painters ever. This painting captures a single moment in time, which would've been exceedingly difficult to do without cameras, and interacts with the audience, who take the role as the subjects of the painting being painted.

Las Meninas is a very confusing and intense painting, with "Inception" ideas portrayed hundreds of years before Leonardo di Caprio was even born. Several of the subjects of the painting look outward to the audience, which is being painted by the portrait of Velazquez. This portrait is reflected in a mirror in the background, and the audience can see that they have taken the role of the King and Queen of Spain in this situation. Other characters include the Infanta Margarita (the focal point of the painting) and a curious man running away in the background. In other words, the painter is asking the artistic question, "how do you know what you know?"

This painting is one of the most self-conscious images images in Western art, and therefore deliberately uses several rhetorical devices in order to challenge the viewer on the certainty of their perspective. One of the main rhetorical devices is the inclusion of otherwise unrelated characters, such as the self-portrait, the man running away in the background, and the dwarf handmaidens waiting on the princess. While the Infanta Margarita is prominently displayed, with her central location and the lightening of the painting drawing the viewer's eyes to her, the King and Queen, the subjects of the portrait, are merely seen in the reflection of the painting-within-the-painting in the background. Thus, Velazquez creates a chaotic scene that challenged many of the artistic normalities of the time period.

If the goal of this painting was to challenge the viewer to question the very idea of it, Velazquez certainly did an effective job in doing so. From the moment I looked at this painting, I began questioning what was going on, and was surprised with the lack of answers to some of my questions. I still do not know why the handmaidens are portrayed in this painting, or why the man running away is doing so. I wonder why Velazquez used only the bottom half of the canvas for his subjects, while most of the upper half remains dark and empty. I puzzle over the logistics of portraying this perspective of the scene, if Velazquez was painting the canvas as shown. Most interestingly, why did Velazquez leave the audience to fill the shoes of royalty?