First impressions

What we find deeply unsettling is the sense that what could have been the subject of a snapshot has been metamorphosed by Velázquez into a major court painting.
Fritz Saxl: Velázquez and Philip IV

Las Meninas is an undoubted masterpiece but its subject is not epic, mythological or grandiose: it is an informal group portrait set in what appears to be the artist’s studio. On one hand, it looks like a snapshot, on the other, it’s a major court painting. Maybe what fascinates us is this tension between form and content.

If we look at the painting carefully, we get the following first impressions:

Its dimensions (318 x 276 cm) suggest it is a major work.

The figures are close to life-size.

It appears to be a palace scene centred on an Infanta surounded by her courtiers and servants.

We can interpret the canvas as depicting a group which has come to see the painter in his atelier, where he is painting a picture.

The room is rectangular and has five side windows, of which two are open.

The light coming in through the door in the background, which a character seems to be opening, lets us see the wall at the back, on which hang two large paintings.

In the background there is a mirror reflecting two characters.

Most of the figures (six out of nine, not counting those in the mirror) face the viewer.

Greyish tones are predominant. There are a few notes of colour scattered among the Infanta and the foregrounded figures.

The foreground is lit by the window on the right. The middle ground is dark, and the background is lit by the light coming in through the door and light reflected off the mirror, probably from the same window as the one lighting the foreground.

The painting is executed in line with the canons of naturalism (“You can count the dog’s hairs,” viewers sometimes say).

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