Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Las Meninas, or The Family of King Philip IV

Diego Velázquez, the most prominent artist of the Spanish Golden Age, created Las Meninas in 1656 and it is currently on display at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Its intricate and mysterious design poses doubts about what is genuine and what is an illusion, as well as establishing an ambiguous interaction between the observer and the figures shown. Las Meninas has been one of the most extensively studied works of Western painting as a result of these complexity. Here is The masterpiece by Velázquez, a painting of a painting within a painting, combines several subjects into one: A self-portrait, an almost art-for-art's-sake display of brilliant brush technique, a picture of Spain's royal family and attendants, and an interior scene provide a window into Velázquez's creative environment.

The picture Las Meninas has long been acknowledged as one of the most significant works of Western art. The Royal Academy of Arts president Sir Thomas Lawrence referred to the piece as "the genuine philosophy of the art" in a letter to his successor David Wilkie in 1827. The Baroque painter Luca Giordano claimed that it reflects the "theology of painting." The picture has since been referred to be "Velázquez's pinnacle achievement, a very self-conscious, calculated demonstration of what painting may achieve, and possibly the most searching statement ever made on the potential of the easel painting," according to more current descriptions.

In addition to being a conundrum that perplexes spectators as to what they are actually looking at, Las Meninas is a discourse on the nature of sight. The mirror that hangs on the far wall of the studio and reflects the faces of the Spanish King and Queen is the equivalent of breaking the fourth wall in terms of visual art. This raises the question of where we are in regard to the royal couple because it immediately implies that they are on our side of the picture plane. In the meantime, it's unclear from Velázquez's full-length representation of himself working at his easel whether the artist is using a mirror or not. Are the subjects of Las Meninas staring at us or at themselves, in other words?

Artist: Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez

Created: 1656 -1657