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How Velázquez Created Art History’s Greatest Visual Riddle
Exploring the mesmerising Las Meninas
Few paintings in the history of art have the capacity to mesmerise as much as this one.
Painted by the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez in about 1656, Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour) attains a level of visual sophistication hardly matched by any painting before or since.
On the surface, we are looking at a scene from the Spanish court of King Philip IV — a room in the Royal Alcázar of Madrid that Velázquez used as his studio.
Yet there is so much more. The way the painting toys with perspectives and reflections transforms the image into a tour de force on how artifice and reality meet in a work of art.
Here, we are looking at a painting that appears to be looking directly at us. Nearly all of the figures look outward, fixing us in their gaze — how do they hold us in their attention? What are we to think of them?
Let’s find out…
The artist at his canvas
