Las Meninas, painted by Velázquez in 1656 and kept in the Prado in Madrid, turns on a small mirror at the back of a room in the royal palace. The mirror holds the faces of King Philip IV and Queen Mariana, who most likely stand where the viewer stands. The painter at his easel looks straight out at them.
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At the center stands the five-year-old Infanta Margarita, in the light, with two maids of honor beside her. Velázquez is at the left, brush in hand, in front of a canvas much taller than he is. The whole scene says that a painter belongs in the company of kings.
That claim was bolder than it looks. The Order of Santiago, the knighthood Velázquez wanted, barred any man who had worked with his hands for pay, and in Spain painting counted as manual work.
In 1658 he applied anyway. The Order sent investigators to find people who knew him, and 74 witnesses, in Madrid and in Seville, spoke for him. What they described was a palace official who painted only to please the king.
I find that harder to forget than anything in the picture. The king's own painter had to be presented by 74 people as a man who hardly painted.
The household around the Infanta
Most of the room can be named because of Antonio Palomino, a painter and biographer who wrote in 1724. His list of names is still the one in use. The two maids of honor, the meninas of the title, are María Agustina Sarmiento and Isabel de Velasco, and one of them kneels to offer the Infanta a small red cup on a tray.
At the right stand Mari Bárbola and Nicolasito Pertusato, two people of short stature who served at court. Pertusato nudges a mastiff with his foot. Behind them, in shadow, the lady-in-waiting Marcela de Ulloa talks with an attendant.
In the open door at the very back, one hand on a curtain, stands José Nieto, a chamberlain of the palace. Palomino places the scene in 1656, in the Prince's Quarter of the Alcázar. Philip IV had given those rooms of his late son to Velázquez as a studio.
The two people the painter is looking at are harder to place, because they appear only in a small mirror at the back.
What You'll Discover
Why scholars disagree about the mirror.
What the painter wears on his chest.
What the picture was called before.
What the fire did to the Infanta's face.