Las Meninas
The five-year-old Spanish Infanta Margaret Theresa stands at the center of a large studio, flanked by her ladies-in-waiting, a dwarf, a dog, and various courtiers, while Velázquez himself stands at the left working at a large canvas. In a mirror at the back of the room, the reflections of the King and Queen of Spain are barely visible. The painting simultaneously depicts a royal visit, the act of painting, and the viewer's position as occupant of the space where the royal couple must stand — making it a meditation on visibility, power, and representation.
Las Meninas is the most analyzed and debated work in Western art history, studied for its extraordinary complexity of perspective, self-reflexivity about the nature of painting, and interrogation of the relationship between observer and observed. Foucault opened his "The Order of Things" with a four-page analysis of the painting as an epitome of the Classical episteme. Picasso made 58 variations of it in 1957. It is simultaneously a royal portrait, a statement of artistic ambition, and a philosophical puzzle.
Velázquez was court painter to Philip IV and one of the most privileged artists in Europe, with access to the Spanish royal collection — the greatest in the world — which he used to study the techniques of Titian and Rubens. Las Meninas was painted during the final decade of his life, when his style had evolved toward an unprecedented freedom of brushwork that Manet and the Impressionists would rediscover two centuries later.