What are we looking at? Las Meninas, translates as 'the girls', this painting is also known as 'The Maids of Honour'. We are immediately displaced, made aware of our position outside of the picture plane. We see the artist on the left hand side of the canvas, stopp back from his canvas, considering what he is painting, the canvas and the subject. He is also looking at us, the viewer.
The left hand side is pierced by the huge domineering canvas which the artist, Velasquez, is working on. We only see the back of the canvas, the stretcher.
Opposite this canvas, on the extreme right of the picturewe see an illuminated opening, a doorway, or a window, painted in such accute perspective it is hard to tell.
In the centre of the picture, just below the horizontal centre line, about two thirds from the top, we are presented with the Infants, Princess Margarita. She is flanked each side by her servant girls,las meninas . To the left of the princess, on of the girls, las meninas, kneels before the Infanta, as in prayer, worshipping the young princess. On the other side, the other servant girl is in a courtsy pose. towards the bottom left hand corner of the painting, next to the servant girl, stands two dwarves. These were employed to entertain the young Infanta, the significance of their height is that they were not to bear down upon the young Roysl heiress.
Immediately in the foreground, slightly to the right, we see a dog, a mastiff, lying on the ground, one of the dwarves has her foot on the dogs back. About to step up on to the dogs back, perhaps, she shows her boredom.
In the far right hand corner of the room stands two figures, the female is possibly the a lady in waiting, a duenna, a woman employed to accompany the young infanta. Sha stands next to a man in dark robes, who stares blankly out of the picture into the area we cannot see presented, but that which we occupy.
On the back wall, almost in the centre of the picture hangs a mirror, surrounded by court paintings. reflected in the mirror are two figures, King Philip IV and his Queen, Mariana, they are in a pose. They are posing for the painting which we see Velasquex painting in the picture.
To the right of the mirror we see anothe opening, this time it is a doorway, leading to a flight of stairs. Standing on the stair is a nobleman, it is unclear wether he is entering or leaving. The position of his right arm and his right leg, leading up the stairs, could suggest that he is about to leave. His gaze follows the light from the open door, it cuts across the canvas outwards beyond the space presented and into to invisible space which we occupy, and cut through the waist of the infanta.
Velasquez has created two pictures here. The one presented, that we are lookng at, and the one represented in the mirror. Crucially the image represented does not exist. It is not a reflection of what we see presented in the canvas. It is something invisible to us, it is only made real through Velasquez's gaze out to the represented space, the space we now occupy.
What Velasquez does is enable passages through the picture. Using light he creates lines of complete circular motion, to guide us around the picture. The light from th eopening on the right travels through the picture plane illuminating the infanta , and continues outward to illuminate the space represented and occupied by the viewer.. This light can be seen reflected on the cheek of the King who we see in the mirror. The light from the door way at the back of the picture shines diagonally across the picture to the bottom left hand corner of the picture. This creayes a tension, simultaneously projecting the infanta outwards, and pulling her into the wall among the court aintings of her ancestory, where she will ultimately be imortalised as Queen.
This light runs in line with the gaze of the nobleman on the stairs. It runs down towards the bottom corner of the canvas in the bottom left hand side of the painting.
It cuts through the waist of the infanta, and crosses at this point the line of sight of the artist, Velasquez, which runs down towards the bottom right of the painting where the dog lies, forming, as Foucault observes, an 'X' formation.
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE
This 'X' thus reinforces that indeed it is the Infanta that is the focus of the painting. By studying the gaze of the infanta we see that both hers and the gaze of her parents, the King and Queen represented in the mirror, are the same, she is looking out at them, and they are looking in at her, from outside the picture and also looking out from the mirror. Considering this, we could suggest that the infantas gaze is infact reflected from the eyes of the King and Queen and projecte into the mirror from their gaze. So n fact what we see in the represented in the mirror is not the King and Queen, but the Infanta.
No comments:
Post a Comment