Las Meninas

painting by Diego Velázquez

Also known as: “The Maids of Honour”, “The Royal Family”

Written by Ann Kay

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Las Meninas, oil painting created in 1656 by Spanish artist Diego Velázquez. Las Meninas shows Velázquez late in his career and at the height of his powers. Its complex composition creates an unparallelled illusion of reality and is a reason that it is one of the most important paintings in the Western canon.

Few works have excited more debate than this painting. The size and subject matter place it in the dignified tradition of portraiture familiar to Velázquez’s contemporaries, but the subject of this portrait is unclear. Velázquez shows himself at the easel in his studio in Madrid’s Alcázar palace. The central figure is that of the five-year-old infanta Margarita Teresa, daughter of King Philip IV and his second wife, Maria Anna. The child is flanked by two meninas (“ladies-in-waiting”). Also present in the foreground are two dwarfs and a large dog, while other courtiers appear elsewhere in the picture. The king and queen are reflected in the mirror on the back wall. Velázquez appears to be painting the royal couple as they pose beyond the easel, but the subject of the painting seems to be Margarita Teresa, who appears surprised by her parents’ entry into the room.

This seemingly casual scene has been very carefully constructed using extensive knowledge of perspective, geometry, and visual illusion to create a tangible space, but one with an aura of mystery, where the spectator’s viewpoint—evidently the same as that of the royal couple—is an integral part of the painting. Velázquez shows how paintings can create a variety of illusions while also showcasing the unique fluid brushwork of his later years. Just a series of daubs when viewed close up, his strokes coalesce into a richly vivid scene as the spectator pulls back. Often called “a painting about painting,” Las Meninas has fascinated many artists, including French Impressionist Édouard Manet, who was especially drawn to Velázquez’s brushwork, figures, and interplay of light and shade.

Ann Kay

Golden Age

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Golden Age

Spanish literature

Also known as: Siglo de Oro

Written by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Quick Facts

Spanish:: Siglo de Oro

Date:: c. 1500 - 1681

Significant Works:: Don Quixote

Related Artists:: Miguel de Cervantes; Pedro Calderón de la Barca; Lope de Vega; Tirso de Molina; St. Teresa of Ávila

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Golden Age, the period of Spanish literature extending from the early 16th century to the late 17th century, generally considered the high point in Spain’s literary history. The Golden Age began with the partial political unification of Spain about 1500. Its literature is characterized by patriotic and religious fervour, heightened realism, and a new interest in earlier epics and ballads, together with the somewhat less-pronounced influences of humanism and Neoplatonism.

During the Golden Age such late medieval and early Renaissance forms as the chivalric and pastoral novels underwent their final flowering. They were replaced by the picaresque novel, which usually described the comic adventures of lowborn rogues and which was exemplified by the anonymously written Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) and by the works of Mateo Alemán and Francisco de Quevedo. Miguel de Cervantes’s monumental novel Don Quixote (part 1, 1605; part 2, 1615), a satirical treatment of anachronistic chivalric ideals, combined pastoral, picaresque, and romantic elements in its narrative and remains the single most important literary work produced during the Golden Age.

Spanish poetry during the period was initially marked by the adoption of Italian metres and verse forms such as those used by Garcilaso de la Vega. It eventually became marked by the elaborate conceits and wordplay of the Baroque movements known as culteranismo and conceptismo, whose chief practitioners were Luis de Góngora and Quevedo, respectively.