Dramatic entrance

You walk into a room and everyone inside turns to look at you, welcoming you. They stop what they're doing, some even begin to curtsy. Makes you feel important. Makes you feel like... royalty?

This is the effect of Las Meninas (Maids of Honor), created ca. 1656-57 and now part of the collection of Museo del Prado in Madrid. It is perhaps Diego Velazquez's most recognizable painting, and certainly one of my all-time favorites.

Velazquez belongs to the the 17th century Baroque movement, which counts among its definitive characteristics the use of light to create dramatic contrast throughout the canvas. This is particularly evident in Las Meninas: bright light bathes the very center of the composition, settling strongest on the young Princess Margarita surrounded by her royal attendants and pet dog. The background is in stark contrast, creating the illusion of foreground and background, of perspective.

But it isn't the use of light here that makes Las Meninas a landmark in the field of visual arts. Rather, it is the idea that Velazquez works with (and unusually, ambitiously so, at that time): that a flat canvas could in fact become multi-dimensional in the sense that the people portrayed in it (and they include Velazquez, for this is partly a self-portrait) could "interact" with those outside of it, i.e., the viewers.

Study the painting carefully. (It would definitely help if you view this enlarged version.) If this were a photograph, the subjects would be said to be looking directly into the lens, directly at the viewer. In the darker background, on the wall, hang framed paintings, blurred so that it isn't exactly clear what they are. Landscapes? Portraits? But one among them stands out. Again, smack in the center, is a frame clearly showing a couple. Unlike the others, this is a mirror, and in it are reflected two people not "physically" present in the painting, but whose presence is nevertheless implied. It is they whom everyone else -- the painter, the princess, her attendants -- are welcoming, are looking at. But who are they? They are the royal couple... yet, at the same time, they are us, the viewers.

Las Meninas has been related over and over again to metafiction, or "writing which...draws attention to its status as an artifact", and very aptly so. For in the same way that, say, Julio Cortazar, in his short and brilliant "Continuity of Parks", carries his protagonist (and us) across the line separating "reality" from "fiction", so does Velasquez draw in viewers of this painting, into the painting itself. We become part of the artist's rendered scene. We are the King and Queen walking into the room (others have also said that the King and Queen are actually standing as models for Velazquez, who is seen here working on another painting), watched by everyone, our "image" reflected in the mirror. We, both as viewers and the royal couple, have just made that dramatic entrance.

Image taken from Mark Harden's Artchive.