What Makes Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas One of the Most Fascinating Paintings in Art History

Diego Velázquez paint­ed Las Meni­nas almost 370 years ago, and it’s been under scruti­ny ever since. If the pub­lic’s appetite to know more about it has dimin­ished over time, that cer­tain­ly isn’t reflect­ed in the view count of the analy­sis from YouTube chan­nel Rab­bit Hole above, which as of this writ­ing has crossed the 2.5 mil­lion mark. So has this video on Las Meni­nas from Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer. What ele­ment of this par­tic­u­lar paint­ing has stoked such fas­ci­na­tion, gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion? Eas­i­er, per­haps, to ask what ele­ment has­n’t.

“Through the 36 years he worked for King Philip IV, Velázquez pro­duced dozens of paint­ings of the Span­ish roy­al fam­i­ly,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Rab­bit Hole video. But the large-scale Las Meni­nas is dif­fer­ent: “the paint­ing appears more like a snap­shot of dai­ly life than a typ­i­cal vis­age of roy­als pos­ing to be paint­ed.”

The fig­ures it depicts include Philip’s five-year-old daugh­ter Infan­ta Mar­garet There­sa and her entourage, as well as Velázquez him­self, at work on a paint­ing — which may be a por­trait of the king and queen, reflect­ed as they are on the mir­ror in the back wall, or per­haps the very image we’re look­ing at. Or could we pos­si­bly be Philip and Mar­i­ana our­selves?

On the rear­most plane of Las Meni­nas stands the queen’s cham­ber­lain Don José Nieto Velázquez (pos­si­bly a rela­tion of the artist), on whom it can hard­ly be a coin­ci­dence that all of the paint­ing’s lines con­verge, like a van­ish­ing point on the hori­zon. Diego Velázquez’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion of him­self bears an even more con­spic­u­ous detail: the knight­hood-sym­bol­iz­ing red cross called the Order of San­ti­a­go. Born a com­mon­er, Velázquez worked for most of his life in close prox­im­i­ty to the roy­als, and seems to have made no big secret of his aspi­ra­tions to join their ranks. Pre­sum­ably, the Order of San­ti­a­go was added after the paint­ing was com­plete, since Las Meni­nas is dat­ed to 1656, but Velázquez was­n’t final­ly knight­ed until 1659, close to the end of his life.

Dif­fer­ent the­o­ries exist to explain who exact­ly added that red cross to the paint­ing, as cov­ered by YouTu­ber-gal­lerist James Payne in the Great Art Explained video just above. Like most works of art that have endured through the cen­turies, Las Meni­nas has its unsolv­able his­tor­i­cal mys­ter­ies, despite its unusu­al­ly well-doc­u­ment­ed cre­ation. But for seri­ous art enthu­si­asts, the most com­pelling ques­tion remains that of just how Velázquez pulled it all off. “Las Meni­nas, with all its splen­did effects, is a vig­or­ous argu­ment for the virtue of paint­ing,” says Puschak. “This gets at the heart of the mir­ror, the van­ish­ing point, and the mul­ti­ple cen­ters of focus. ‘See what my art can do,’ Velázquez is say­ing to the view­er” — whether that view­er is King Philip, or some­one across the world near­ly four cen­turies lat­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Short Intro­duc­tion to Car­avag­gio, the Mas­ter Of Light

The Pra­do Muse­um Dig­i­tal­ly Alters Four Mas­ter­pieces to Strik­ing­ly Illus­trate the Impact of Cli­mate Change

The Pra­do Muse­um Cre­ates the First Art Exhi­bi­tion for the Visu­al­ly Impaired, Using 3D Print­ing

Sal­vador Dalí Sketch­es Five Span­ish Immor­tals: Cer­vantes, Don Quixote, El Cid, El Gre­co & Velázquez

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.