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minds as the visual epitome of the seventeenthand eighteenth-century scientific worldview. This
is how Michel Foucault describes it in his bestseller, The Order of Things (1966), using an
interpretive approachwe can label it an oeuvreindependent onethat attends to the work in vir
tual isolation from other paintings that Velazquez
completed. The present aim is to show how Foucaults oeuvre-independent approach to interpreting Las Meninas has precipitated a one-sidedness
in philosophical discussions of the work since the
1960s. I refer here mainly to otherwise excellent
and influential articles by John Searle, and Joel
Snyder and Ted Cohen, along with a similar assortment of writings by others who continue to adopt
Foucaults, Searles, and Snyder and Cohens oeuvre-independent methods for understanding the
work.2
Such has been the prevailing philosophical
practice when discussing Las Meninas within the
Foucauldian legacy. Once we consider Las Meninass meaning more concretely in relation to some
of Velazquezs
other paintings, it becomes evident
that although Foucault himself characterizes Las
Meninas as a paradigmatic illustration of classical
representation, the art-historical context reveals
that the painting represents the classical outlook
only partially, since it also embodies the outlooks
Foucault describes exclusively in contrast to the
classical one, namely, those of the Renaissance and
Modern eras. Las Meninas cannot consequently
do the exemplificatory work that Foucault intends
without ignoring crucial layers of the works meaning. These layers, as we shall see, are shown significantly through the relationship between Las
Meninas and an assortment of other works by
260
Velazquez
that include the companion work to
Las Meninas, namely, The Spinners (1657), several works from his early period, an important religious work from his middle period, and his many
portraits of dwarfs.
Foucault is not the only major philosopher who
uses single works of art illustratively to present
complex phenomena such as historical periods,
artistic phases, social movements, or psychological conditions. Hegel is perhaps the most well
known for this theorizing style, as he states, for instance, that the Pyramids put before our eyes the
simple prototype of symbolical art itself.3 A related kind of one-sidedness arises upon interpret
ing Carl Hubners
The Silesian Weaver (1844)a
work frequently cited in the Marxist literatureas
a condensation of Marxist attitudes toward capitalism, or Leonardos Virgin and Child with St.
Anne (1510) as a psychoanalytic document that
reveals the contents of Leonardos unconscious.
The inherent difficulty resides in presenting only
a contributing aspect of a whole as the essence of
the whole. This can obviously result from interpreting the work apart from other works by the
same artist to yield a relatively superficial conception of the works meaning, as Martin Heidegger does with Van Goghs A Pair of Shoes
(1885).
A more oeuvre-cognizant interpretation of
masterpieces such as Las Meninas alternatively
provides support for a philosophical principle and
associated precautionary note about using works
of artespecially great ones (and these are often the ones used)to depict theoretical themes.
As a rule, the greater the work, the richer will
its meaning be, and in view of this richer meaningone typically revealed by comparing and contrasting the work to others by the same artist
the less likely will its semantic content be sufficiently circumscribed to represent a single time
period, general historical principle, or concrete social or psychological constellation in any sharply
defined, single-minded way, contrary to how
Hegel speaks about the Pyramids and Symbolic
Art or to how Foucault speaks about Las Meninas and the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
scientific worldview.
With such philosophical considerations in mind,
let us now turn to the details of Las Meninas in an
effort to appreciate its complicated and difficultto-contain meaning.
LAS MENINAS
Velazquez
(15991660) was one of the worlds
most accomplished painters.4 Since its first public
exhibition in Madrids Museo del Prado in 1819
prior to which time the large, 10 12 by 9 foot painting had remained for over 160 years in the Spanish
royal familys private collectionit has been recognized as a masterpiece in both Spain and in the
history of Western art. Despite such an illustrious
art-historical status, this monumental work continues to elude our understanding.
Las Meninas shows an informal assemblage of
people in Velazquezs
studio, which was located
in Madrids Alcazar
Palace.5 While a large dog
possibly the Kings dogrelaxes in the immediate
foreground, we see, in sequence, a boyish-looking
figure, reported to be a midget, a stout, female
dwarf, an elegantly dressed five-year-old Spanish princess as one of the paintings centers of
attraction, her two young maids of honor, and
Velazquez
himself, now in his late fifties, who
pauses to set his eyes on us while at work on
a large canvas whose surface we cannot directly
see. A nun and a watchman stand nearby, supervising the children. Posed in a doorway in the distant background, the Queens Chamberlainpart
of whose responsibility is to open and close doors
for the Queenobserves the entire scene, resting
his hand upon a curtain or tapestry.6 Located at
the same distance as the Chamberlain in the background and near the middle of the painting, a
mirror reflects the images of the then fifty-oneyear-old Spanish monarch, Philip IV (16051665)
and his twenty-two-year-old wife and niece, Mariana (16341696).7
A group of paintings, obscurely rendered and
easy to pass over, but of significant interpretive importance to Las Meninas, covers the walls of the
high-ceilinged salon, among which are two prominent ones that overlook the above variety of royal
household figures. These portray episodes from
Ovids Metamorphoses and seem like a pair of
261
series of reiterations, reformulations, and refutations of Foucaults interpretation has constituted
the philosophical literature surrounding the work,
the most transformative of which were published
during the early 1980s. This was when the paintings geometrical composition was described to
English-speaking readers with a precision that, for
some, settled long-standing uncertainties about
how to interpret the mirror image of the King and
Queen in the paintings background.
Now, over four decades later, and notwithstanding how oeuvre-independent theorizing about Las
Meninas continues well in his footsteps, Foucaults
trendsetting discussion has fallen into relative neglect and semi-disrepute. Aside from his intellectual popularity having faded, the attractiveness
of Foucaults specific interpretation has been diminished through a perceived incompatibility between the paintings now-acknowledged geometrical composition and a prevailing assumption of
his interpretation, namely, that within the paintings fictive construction, the mirror on the back
wall reflects the images of the King and Queen as if
they were standing outside of the painting directly
in front of the mirror, and were looking at that
mirror to see their own reflections. The paintings
geometrical composition contradicts this account
of the mirrors reflection, and Foucaults interpretation has consequently suffered.
With respect to the philosophical issues mentioned above, several observations will emerge
from the following analysis of Las Meninas. The
262
rich, multileveled semantic structure, so rather
than contradicting and excluding it, the geometrical approach complements and deepens the phenomenological approach by revealing additional
levels of meaning. Moreover, these interpretative
approaches operate interactively in Las Meninas
to produce an ambiguity-exploitative composition
that, as will be argued here, constitutes and accounts for a substantial aspect of the paintings
intriguing quality. Both interpretive approaches
become misrepresentative, however, as do the corresponding uses of the painting as a philosophical
exemplar, when employed in the absence of at
tending to Velazquezs
other paintings.
The second point is that, although the phenomenological basis of Foucaults interpretation
is legitimate, it does not harbor enough detail to
sustain the arguments for his more particular and
historically striking claim that Las Meninas is the
representation of what he calls Classical representation, namely, the Gods-eye, personally neutral, scientific style of representation that, according to Foucault, rose to prominence during the
1600s and 1700s. To appreciate this shortcoming
in Foucaults argumentation, we will augment the
phenomenological and geometrical approaches by
considering some of Las Meninass symbolic features through a more oeuvre-cognizant approach.
ii.
LAS MENINAS
a` la foucault
263
Following this Foucauldian approach for a moment and regarding Las Meninas as a representation of Classical representation, we have
Velazquez
presenting himself in the work as a
painter immersed in the activity of painting, and
we see around him the instruments and results of
the representational process, such as his palette
and brushes, in addition to an array of completed
paintings that hang on the walls. We also see the
basic components of the representational situa
tion, namely, the representer (Velazquez),
the audience (the man in the background who observes
the entire scene from a distance and from behind),
and, as Foucault assumes, the ghostlike subject
matter (the King and Queen of Spain, who appear
only as relatively small, vaguely rendered images
in a distant mirror).14 As if one were setting out
silverware on a table, the painting arranges these
components such that each element, not unlike
each gaze in the painting, remains disconnected
from and noninteractive with the others.
Foucault observes that these elements of representation are integrated only beyond the paint
ings borders, in us, the observers, since Velazquez,
the observing man, and the King and Queen all
look at us as we stand outside of the painting.
The elements of representation further coalesce
in us insofar as our place involves a triple over
lap with the physical place of Velazquez
as the
actual painter, the actual King and Queen who
supposedly see their reflections in the mirror on
the back wall, and of other, past and future observers of the painting. Foucault consequently
maintains that these three elements of representation (namely, representer, subject matter, and
audience) since they are united in a single point
outside of, rather than within, the painting, highlight the idea that Classical representation defies its own limits, for we must look beyond the
explicit contents of the Classical representation
to make full sense of its function as a representation.15 Such is Foucaults account of how Las
Meninas portrays Classical representation. These
representations present themselves as objective,
self-sufficient representations of the world, but
they are not self-sufficient insofar as they implicate the presence of subjects outside of themselves
to account for what they are mainly about.
To sustain this interpretation, Foucault assumes
that as part of Las Meninass fictive arrangement,
the centrally placed mirror at the rear of the
264
painting indicates that the actual King and Queen
are standing outside of the painting, directly opposite the mirror, and are seeing themselves in
its reflection. He thus regards the mirror as virtually announcing them to be the subjects of the
gazes of the people in the painting who are looking outward and as the likely subjects of the large,
hidden canvas within Las Meninas upon which
Velazquez
is working. This pictorial device places
all observers of Las Meninas, as well as the ac
tual Velazquez,
in the place of the King and
Queen and raises us all imaginatively to a royal
status.
Emphasizing this psychological impact of the
mirrors reflection upon the audience, some interpretations of Las Meninas claim that the paintings
popularity has been due partially to how it makes
us all feel like royalty, as we observe others from
the perspective of the King and Queen. The experience might indeed have been powerful when
the painting was first publicly shown, since social
divisions were more pronounced, and the lives of
aristocrats were more of a mystery to the majority
of the population.16 It is also conceivable that such
an uplifting experience resides in a world outside
of Velazquezs
intentions, since as the official, and
significantly insulated, court painter, he is more
likely to have been addressing his painting essentially to the monarch who employed him, without
intending to include the general public within the
paintings fictional construction.
As we shall see, the visual dynamics of the
painting are complicated beyond such alternatives. When we consider the mirror reflection from
the geometrical, rather than from the phenomenological standpoint, it does not reflect objects that
are located directly in front of it, but reflects at an
angle, and does not reflect anyone whom we might
presume to be standing outside of and in front of
the painting. Moreover, if the geometrical interpretation is accepted as definitive, Foucaults (or
any) interpretation of Las Meninas will be destabilized to the extent that it regards the background
mirror as providing a direct reflection of the paintings audience.
265
but see a reflection of the hidden canvas that contains their dual portrait. The phenomenological
approach renders the hidden canvass contents unknown and reveals the identity of the audience as
the King and Queen; the geometrical approach,
as far as we have described things, renders the
identity of the audience unknown and reveals the
contents of the hidden canvas as a painting of the
King and Queen.
If we reflect further upon the paintings geometrical composition and, in particular, consider
the location of the vanishing point or visual centerfor this is where the ideal observers eye level
would bewe can calculate that this visual center
is located in the doorway, in the light, immediately beneath the standing mans elbow, in direct
line with the eye level of the standing menina, at
a height of 4 feet 7 inches.22 The geometrically intended audience for Las Meninas is consequently
positioned at this physical height that is taller than
the 3 foot 6 inch dwarf, taller than the five-year-old
princess at the center of the painting, taller than
the kneeling menina, and yet shorter than all of
the adults in the painting.
If Las Meninass geometrical composition locates its audience at a 4 foot 7 inch eye level, diametrically opposite the man in the doorway, we
should consider who the audience might be, given
the eye levels relatively low height. Whoever the
audience is, it will contrast with or complement
the standing King and Queen of Spain who are
reflected in the mirror.
266
against each. Artworks can convey incompatible
messages, so these queries can signify that no one
of the indicated audiences strongly excludes or
predominates over the others.
First, the most obvious audience of Las Meninas located at this eye level is King Philip him
self, sitting, who often visited Velazquezs
studio
to watch the latter paint. Francesco Pacheco reports the following: The liberality and affability
Velazquez
paint at leisure, nearly every day.23
Velazquez
might well have painted Las Meninas mainly for the Kings personal and official
appreciation, since the King probably commissioned the work in its broad thematic outlines
(given its monumental size), and since we know
observing Velazquez
paint.
Moreover, the portrayal of mythological
themes in Las Meninass wall paintings can be read
as criticizing the King, either in his artistic taste
For Velazquez
to indicate geometrically a dwarf
as an intended audience for Las Meninas would
essentially be to situate himself as this audience
through the use of symbolism. His paintings of
court dwarfs can be seen, in part, as self-portraits
of his own status, for they are portraits of socially
less respected individuals who are also often privy
to higher-level secrets. This kind of social status involves a simultaneous subordination and uplifting
that, on a larger scale, structurally matches the way
Las Meninas simultaneously subordinates and uplifts its audience in how, on the one hand, we are
led to identify with the royally standing King and
Queen through the mirror, while on the other, led
to identify with someone placed at a lower eye
level than all of the average-sized adults shown in
the painting.
This effect is, in fact, doubly determined within
the painting: it occurs via the complementarity
of the phenomenological and geometrical interpretations, as just noted, but it also occurs within
the phenomenological register alone. As the audience looks at the mirror on the back wall and
identifies in stature with the standing King and
Queen, Velazquezs
figure also looks down on the
audience to situate it at an eye level lower than
the other adults in the painting. These observations support the proposition that in Las Meninas,
Velazquez
intends to portray his own ambiguous
status in the court of King Philip.
Once one acknowledges this Las Meni
nas as self-portrait or Velazquez
as court
jesterdwarf audience option, Foucaults interpretation of Las Meninas falls to the ground,
since the painting would be significantly about
Velazquez
himself, where Velazquezs
figure is in
the painting centrally and explicitly, and not hidden outside of it, as Foucaults interpretation requires. Strengthening this idea, we also have on
record one of the first descriptions of Las Meninas from 1696 by Felix da Costa, who observed
that Las Meninas seems to be more of a por
trait of Velazquez
than of the young princess. Fi
nally, this dwarf-as-symbolizing-Velazquez
option
also coheres with the compositional prominence
of Minerva Punishing Arachne and Apollo Defeating Pan on the studios back wall, since the symbolic import of these works can be understood as
267
expressing Velazquezs
position as an underappreciated artist.
One might nonetheless question this interpretation of the audience, since it remains that the
average height of dwarfs is slightly less than
4 feet 7 inches, and since the female dwarf in
Las Meninas is portrayed as having a height of
268
Meninas in conjunction with some other works by
Velazquez.
Velazquez
finished another monumental painting
that presents similar interpretation-related puzzles and whose precise subject matter still remains
to be identified. This work, also originally untitled,
is usually referred to as The Spinners.28 Its foreground portrays a set of women spinning yarn in
a tapestry workshop, and its background contains
a mythologically suggestive tableau that contrasts
anomalously with the paintings foreground realism. The subject portrayed is presently accepted
as the fable of Arachnea fable noted above as
the subject of one of two large paintings in Las
Meninas that stand above the royal household
figures.
Although we cannot here explore the diverse
interpretations of The Spinners in detail, two observations bear on the present discussion of Las
portrayed
Meninas.29 The first is that if Velazquez
the fable of Arachne in his last two monumental works, then its significancea significance that
Foucault never comes close to consideringmust
be included in the interpretation of either painting. Of the various audiences we have identified,
we have noted that the presence of the fable of
Arachne supports the idea that Las Meninas is sig
nificantly a self-portrait of Velazquezs
ambiguous
status in the court of Philip IV, where he regards
himself on a par with the court dwarfs and jesters.
The Spinners also supports the third possibility mentioned above, namely, that one of the
audiences of Las Meninas is intended to be a
menina-figure of some sort. To appreciate this, we
can consider independently how, in Las Meninas,
there is a congruence between the positioning of
Velazquezs
hand, brush, and palette in Las Meninas and the positioning of St. Johns hand, pen,
Velazquez
is portraying himself as St. John in
Las Meninas, then as a religious visionary he
would be gazing beyond the paintings borders toward a young and beautiful thirteen- or fourteenyear-old girl, as prescribed by Pacheco as the
ideal image for the Immaculate Conception. This
Avila
(15151582) was named patroness of Spain
in 1617 and was canonized in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV. In addition, the Spanish mystic Sor Mara
de Agreda
(16021665)known for her controversial exaltation of the Virgin Mary in her book
The Mystical City of God (c. 1655)was the
that Velazquez
was aware of Durers
famous engraving and its symbolic import.
With respect to the open and illuminated door
way in Las Meninas, Velazquez
used a similar compositional device of looking through the
painting into a distant divine scene in one of
his earlier religious paintings, Kitchen Scene with
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1618),
where we look, not into the illumination of the
divine symbolized by pure light, but likewise into
a room that contains Christ in a chair, sitting like a
king. Velazquezs
occasional use of a white headscarf to adorn his images of Maryas in his The
Adoration of the Magi (1619) and The Coronation of the Virgin (1645)also adds to the religious
resonance of the woman at the spinning wheel in
The Spinners, who is wearing such a scarf. This is
Velazquez
as identifying himself with St. John in
Las Meninas.34
In Las Meninas, only the paintings audience is
in the position to see through the open, brightly illuminated doorway, beyond the paintings worldly
realm and conceivably into the realm of the divine.
269
another, King, Queen, meninas, and dwarfs alike,
and the more universal message seems to be that
only by standing outside of oneselfin this case,
only by standing outside of the paintingis the
path to enlightenment discernable.
In sum, not only does the fourfold symbolic
sequence complement on a more otherworldly
and ecstatic scale the more worldly and immediately perceivable hierarchy that we apprehend
explicitly within the painting, as we move upwards
from the dog, to the midget and dwarf, to the
princess and meninas, to the adults, and finally to
the ghostly images of the King and Queen, but it
also shows that Foucaults intuitions were correct
when he discerned that the painting expressed a
Gods-eye, or divine, vision of things.
vi. conclusion
By exploring Las Meninas as a paradigm case, this
article has argued for a more oeuvre-cognizant approach toward the interpretation of artistic masterpieces, insofar as the works are intended to
be used as philosophical examples. Las Meninas is illustrative since, within the philosophical literature, we presently have a forty-year-long
tradition of interpreting the work in an oeuvreindependent manner, where the tradition fosters
a situation that does not provide enough interpretive potentiality for important dimensions of
the works meaning to emerge easily. As this excursion into Las Meninass art-historical context
has shown, these further dimensions of meaning
present themselves when we compare it to other
works by the same artist. Almost seventy years
ago, in 1943, Jose Ortega y Gasset advocated this
kind of approach:
270
following dimensions: it renders explicit four possible audiences that the geometrically grounded
interpretation of the painting determines; it underscores the relevance of Las Meninass mytho
logical content; it reveals more of how Velazquezs
own persona and painterly status at the court have
impressed themselves into the works meaning;
and it reveals a hitherto unrecognized Christian
content in the painting. It also reveals, contrary
to Foucaults analysis of Las Meninas, how the
painting expresses not only Classical content but
also MedievalRenaissance and Modern content
in the form of Christian mysticism and multiperspectivism, respectively. By showing that the
structure of Las Meninas reverberates on several
Department of Philosophy
University of Auckland
Auckland, New Zealand 92019
internet: r.wicks@auckland.ac.nz
Velazquez
completed. In one of the footnotes, she dismisses
the idea of exploring Las Meninass companion piece, The
Spinners (Las Hilanderas)a key painting that we will consideron the grounds that its meaning is no more clear than
that of Las Meninas (and hence, promises no informative
results) (p. 267, note 5). Out of a total of fifty-two endnotes, two (namely, notes 23 and 32) depart from the articles overall tenor and provide some supportive references
to Velazquezs
other works.
Another example is Joel Snyders lengthy article, Las
Meninas and the Mirror of the Prince, Critical Inquiry 11
(1985): 539572. The article contains a paragraph (p. 542,
plus one accompanying endnoteout of thirty) devoted to
to Velazquezs
other works is brief, and it does not note
how the gazes angles are dispersed in Las Meninas. This, of
course, leaves the article in no position to consider what the
significance of the dispersal might be. Although Snyders
article includes much art-historical information, he does not
Velazquez
portrays this menina with a height of about 4 feet
10 inches, and though short, this is a more likely height for
the fourteen-year-old menina, Mara Agustina Sarmiento.
Both meninas also appear to be more than seven years old,
judging by the noticeably larger sizes of their hands in contrast to those of the five-year-old princess.
7. In the literature on Las Meninas, the King and Queen
are usually spoken of as a pair, almost always in a single
breath, but there was some personal distance between them.
With some hesitation, Philip married his fifteen-year-old
niece at age forty-four because his son from an earlier marriage, Baltasar Carlos (16291646), to whom his niece had
been betrothed, had died three years earlier, and he needed
another son and heir. In the year after Las Meninas was
painted, that hoped-for son, Philip Prospero (16571661),
was born, the first of three.
8. Velazquezs
student and son-in-law, Juan Bautista
Martnez del Mazo (16121667), painted these copies. Mazo
also did a copy of Las Meninas in which he omitted the reflections of the King and Queen in the mirrorreflections
that, as we shall see, play a central role in Foucaults inter
pretation of Velazquezs
original.
9. The painting of Apollo defeating Pan is sometimes
referred to incorrectly as that of Apollo flaying Marsyas.
This mistitling appears in scholarly essays by (among others) Amy M. Schmitter, Picturing Power: Representation and Las Meninas, p. 256, and Madlyn Millner Kahn,
Velazquez
and Las Meninas, The Art Bulletin 57 (1975):
225246, p. 229, not to mention recent books, for example, Velazquez: The Complete Paintings, by Fernando Checa
(New York: Abrams, 2008), p. 199, where the author states
that Apollo Flaying Marsyas, after Jordaens, is easily recognized. Rubens portrayed the contest between Apollo and
Pan in a more sketch-like work that is virtually identical to
Jordaenss painting and is the source of these images, but
Mazos copy more closely matches Jordaenss version.
10. This will soften Jonathan Browns and Carmen Gar
ridos claim that Velazquez
painted his final religious work,
namely, The Coronation of the Virgin (16401644) at least a
decade before Las Meninas. See their book, Velazquez: The
Technique of Genius (Yale University Press, 1998), p. 117.
11. The term modern can refer to a time period begin
ning in the early 1600s with Descartes (and Velazquez),
as in
modern philosophy, from Descartes to Kant; it can refer
to a time period when a greater emphasis started to be given
to ones historical situation, heritage, and future direction,
namely, beginning with Kant in the late 1700s and extending across the following century, which is how Foucault uses
the term; it can refer to a period beginning with the start of
the twentieth century, as in modern art, that seeks to dis-
271
engage from the nineteenth-century artistic styles and start
radically afresh.
12. In Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in
the Age of Reason (New York: Vintage, 1965, repr. 1988),
Foucault centers his characterization of the Age of Reason
upon a date can serve as a landmark: 1656, the decree that
eral
14. Velazquezs
studiothe setting for Las Meninaswas
also the former room of Philip IVs son, Baltasar Carlos
(16291646), who had died exactly a decade before. Insofar
as the deceased princes presence permeates the painting,
the prince might be a better candidate for the kind of invisible presence that Foucaults interpretation is seeking, since
the King and Queen are present in the painting explicitly as
mirror reflections.
15. It is regrettable that although Foucault looks beyond
the painting in a phenomenological sense, he does not look
beyond Las Meninas in the oeuvre-cognizant sense of con
sidering any other of Velazquezs
works.
16. Alisa Luxenberg writes, What an empowering experience it must have been after 1820 for ordinary viewers,
without court connections, to see this painting and step into
the royal shoes. Alisa Luxenberg, The Aura of a Masterpiece: Responses to Las Meninas in Nineteenth-Century
Spain and France, in Velazquezs Las Meninas, ed. Suzanne
L. Stratton-Pruitt (Cambridge University Press, 2003),
pp. 846.
17. John Searle, Las Meninas and the Paradoxes of Pictorial Representation, Critical Inquiry 6 (1980): 477488.
18. Searle was not the first to imagine this. It was first
suggested in the 1819 Prado catalogue (see Jonathan Brown,
Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting
[Princeton University Press, 1978], p. 101). The idea has
also been mentioned by R. A. M. Stevenson, Velazquez, ed.
Denys Sutton (London, 1895 [repr. 1962], p. 98) and Kurt
Gerstenberg, Diego Velazquez (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1957), p. 191.
19. Joel Snyder and Ted Cohen, Reflections on Las
Meninas: Paradox Lost, Critical Inquiry 7 (1980): 429447.
20. Las Meninas was cleaned and restored in 1984, one
effect of which is that the light surrounding the figure in
the doorway has a new, arresting brilliance (The Cleaning
of Las Meninas, Editorial, The Burlington Magazine, Vol.
CXXVII, No. 982, January 1985, p. 3).
21. Snyders and Cohens claim in 1980 that the mirror
272
for it is viewed from the back, the side that rests on the
easel. Velazquez
demonstrated his brilliant talent by revealing what he was painting through an ingenious device, making use of the crystalline brightness of a mirror painted at the
back of the gallery and facing the picture, where the reflection, or repercussion, of our Catholic King and Queen, Philip
and Mariana, is represented. Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt,
Introduction, in Velazquezs Las Meninas, ed. Suzanne
L. Stratton-Pruitt (Cambridge University Press, 2003),
pp. 17.
22. John M. Moffitt states in his carefully researched
article that The viewers eye level, that is the vanishing
point, is located at 1.4m [ = 4 feet 7 inches] above the level
Alcazar
Palace in 1656: The Meaning of the Mise-en-Scene
of Las Meninas, Art History 6 (1983): 271300, p. 285.
23. Enriqueta Harris, Velazquez (Oxford University
Press, 1982), p. 193.
24. Velazquez
aspired to become a Knight of the Military Order of Santiago, but King Philip did not confer this
(Velazquez
died eight months later, at age sixty-one). The
King had awarded the same knightship to the court play de la Barca, in 1637 (at age thirtywright, Pedro Calderon
seven), who had begun his career in the court at the same
time as Velazquez,
in the early 1620s, and whose family
Velazquezs
argument, echoing the earlier Italian efforts of
Alberti and Leonardo, for the nobility of painting as a liberal art and, by implication, for the appropriateness of his
receiving a knightship.
25. In the Journal of the American Medical Association, there has been some debate over whether certain of
Velazquezs
painted dwarfs represent an achrondroplastic
condition, a hypothyroid cretin condition, or an instance
als Kunstlerin.
Velazquez
Las hilanderas als Gegenentwurf
Potter, Velazquez
Las Hilanderas, Artibus et Historiae 8
de Agreda,
as it reached Teresa de Avila,
in the form of
possible converso
Christian cabala (p. 38). For Velazquezs
heritage, see note 24 above.
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