Art and Architecture (SP3055)

Description of Las Meninas

You may wish to follow up this intriguing materialistic reading of the picture.

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It is the summer of 1656. We see a room in the old, remodelled Moorish fortress, the Alcázar Royal Palace in Madrid. The space depicted was formerly part of the suite maintained for the since deceased Crown Prince of Spain, Baltasar Carlos, who died at age seventeen, shortly after his betrothal to Mariana of Austria. Mariana is now married to Baltasar's father, Philip IV. The pane less, shuttered windows to our right face south. The other sources of light are complex. Light flows in from two open windows, the source of shadows on the floor, and from the door at the rear or east wall, but also seemingly from the omega-shaped visual space in front of the spot where we stand, before this immense, life-sized work. Paintings, at least two of which can be clearly distinguished, hang on all the visible walls of the rectangular space. All the figures in the painting, with the exception of the dog and the male courtier along the wall to the right, have known names, and in some cases their genealogies can be traced with precision. In the approximate canter of the lower section of the painting stands the Infanta Margarita, at this moment in 1656 the only living progeny of the combined effort of Philip and Mariana. She is the object of attention of same of the people in the room. To her right and left are two aristocratic Castilian meninas: maids of honor or, less euphemistically, servants. Doña Isabel de Velasco is to the right, apparently beginning to curtsey. Doña María Agustina Sarmiento, to the left, kneels to offer the Infanta water on a silver salver. The drink is contained in a búcaro, a small vessel made of scented, reddish clay that is sometimes nibbled after the pear-sweetened liquid in it has been consumed for refreshment on the hot, humid summer days. At our right foreground, serving as a repoussoir locking our vision into the picture, is the nameless dog, its eyes closed. The foot resting on, or rather prodding itsback belongs to the male midget Nikolás, also known as Nicolasito Pertusato. Slightly behind him, on a diagonal, stares the female dwarf Mari-Bárbola. Behind this group of three a woman dressed in nun's habit, Doña Marcela de Ulloa, gestures in conversation with the male chaperon of the ladies, the anonymous Guarda Damas. His face, even after the substantial and controversial cleaning received by the painting in the summer of 1984, is blurred because of the great fire of 1734 that destroyed much of the Alcázar and about a foot, perhaps rather more, of the right side of the painting and its original frame. (Inexplicably this damage is not taken into account in attempts to describe the geometry of the Las Meninas.) At one of two doorways set in the facing wall is poised José de Nieto Velázquez, the Queen's Quarter Master or Chamberlain, who ten years later was to become Tapicero Mayor, the guardian of the extensive Spanish tapestry collection. Nieto stands on the steps, or enters the room, or leaves it. With his left hand he respectfully holds his broad-brimmed hat, with his right hand he pushes back, or draws in, a curtain; according to elaborate court etiquette, his presence indicates that the queen is nearby, perhaps ready to leave the room.

To the far left stands the painter himself, the fifty-five year old Diego de Silva Velázquez. This is his only verifiable and extant self-portrait. He is the Royal Painter and guardian of the extensive Spanish painting collection. In his role as Court Architect he has been instrumental in remodeling the room in which he stands. At his belt, on his right side, is the key of his additional office as King's Chamberlain. He may be wearing a simple wig. On his black doublet, like a signatory initial for Diego (Spanish: Iago), is affixed the red cross of Saint James (Santiago). It represents the highest of the three most signficant military orders of Spanish nobility dating back to the Crusades. The cross apparently cannot have been painted by Velázquez in 1656, however, since he attained the status that had eluded him for so long only three years later, just before his death in 1660. To Velázquez's immediate right, angled in front of him, is a huge canvas with its back and frame toward us. He holds in his left hand some of the tools of his trade: a palette turned to show paints, a mahlstick (used for steadying the hand when doing close work), and round brushes mounted in goose quills affixed to wooden shafts. He depicts himself to be working on a canvas, the dipped brush in his right hand held in suspended animation. We cannot see what, if anything, is supposed to be on the canvas.

The extract is from Geoffrey Waite, "Lenin in Las Meninas: an essay in Historical-Materialist Vision", in History and Theory, Vol. XXV (1986), 248 - 285.