Who Is Las Meninas Really a Painting Of?

In Madrid hangs a painting so famous people stand three deep to see it. Most think it's a portrait of a little princess. But at the back of the room, a small mirror shows a king and a queen standing exactly where you are. In this episode: everyone in Velázquez's Las Meninas (1656) and who they really were, the three competing explanations of the mirror, why the painting was called “The Family” for almost two hundred years and was even catalogued with the wrong princess, the 1734 fire that cost the Infanta part of her face, and the red cross of Santiago on the painter's chest, painted in after a knighthood he didn't win until 1659 with help from the Pope. ▶ WATCH NEXT: another painting that only works from one spot in the room. Holbein's The Ambassadors and the skull you can't see: [   • There's a Hidden Skull in This Painting — ...  ] 🔔 Subscribe to Artful Secrets — new secrets from art history every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. ⏱ CHAPTERS 0:00 The mirror at the back of the room 1:04 Who's who in the room 3:11 What's in the mirror? Three readings 4:45 The painting that forgot its own name 6:02 The cross he wasn't allowed to wear 7:53 So who is it really a painting of? 9:07 Goya, Picasso and the little princess 9:33 Watch next: The Ambassadors SOURCES • Antonio Palomino, El museo pictórico y escala óptica (1715–24) • José López-Rey, Velázquez: Catalogue Raisonné (Taschen, 1999) • Joel Snyder, “Las Meninas and the Mirror of the Prince,” Critical Inquiry (1985); Snyder & Cohen, Critical Inquiry (1980) • Leo Steinberg, “Velázquez' Las Meninas,” October 19 (1981) • Madlyn Kahr, “Velázquez and Las Meninas,” The Art Bulletin (1975) • Simon Altmann, “The Illusion of Mirrors: Velázquez's Las Meninas,” European Review (2013) • Suzanne Stratton-Pruitt (ed.), Velázquez's Las Meninas (Cambridge, 2003) • Museo Nacional del Prado, Las Meninas (P001174) Accuracy notes: who painted the cross is unproven. Palomino reports the king ordered it added after Velázquez's death, “and some say his Majesty himself painted it.” The mirror readings and the meaning of the Ovid paintings are interpretations, not facts. Paintings: public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Three theories about the mirror: the king and queen are standing where you are, the mirror reflects the hidden canvas, or there was never a mirror at all. Which one do you buy? 👇 If you like paintings that only work from one spot, the skull in Holbein's Ambassadors is next. #LasMeninas #ArtHistory #ArtfulSecrets