Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez

Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez

A room in the palace

The scene is a large, high room in the royal Alcázar of Madrid. At the centre stands the five-year-old Infanta Margarita Teresa, daughter of Philip IV, in a pale silk dress. Two maids of honour, the meninas of the title, attend her: one kneels to offer her a small red clay cup, the other leans towards her. To the right are two of the court’s dwarfs, Mari Bárbola and Nicolás Pertusato, who has a foot on the back of a drowsy mastiff. Behind them a lady-in-waiting talks with an escort, and at the far end the queen’s chamberlain, José Nieto, pauses on the steps of a bright open doorway.

The painter and the mirror

On the left Velázquez has painted himself at work, brush in hand, standing back from a huge canvas whose front we cannot see and looking straight out of the picture. On the back wall a mirror holds the faces of King Philip IV and Queen Mariana, which places the royal couple where the viewer stands, and makes the whole scene a question of who is looking at whom. The red cross of the Order of Santiago on the painter’s chest was added later: he was admitted to the order only in 1659, three years after the picture was finished.

Where it hangs

It is in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, and measures 318 by 276 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 9,000-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 60 inches on its longest side.

Sources: Museo del Prado, Madrid · Wikidata Q208758 · Wikimedia Commons