Scenes from a golden age

Standard ideas about seventeenth-century Spain tend to focus on troubles: military defeats, economic backwardness, social rigidity, religious uniformity. These were part of the reality, but only part. Spanish culture was also one of the most brilliant in seventeenth-century Europe. Spanish painters and writers produced work that was inventive and in many ways astonishingly modern—and their work enjoyed strong support from the crown and the great aristocracy, groups from which cultural conservatism might have been expected.

The picture below is one of the greatest examples of this cultural flowering: Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor), from 1656, by the court painter Diego Velázquez. (Elliott's Richelieu and Olivares reproduces several other examples of his work, since he served as the king's official painter during Olivares's time in power.)

(source: Wikimedia Commons)

The picture shows a scene in the royal palace: Velazques himself appears at the left, holding his brush and palette; at the center, looking right at us, is the king's daughter, with her two companions, richly dressed but subservient to her; a little boy plays with a pet dog, and a dwarf (still a popular entertainment at seventeenth-century courts) is also present; behind them are a nun and a priest, and a courtier (dressed in a standard aristocratic outfit of the era) looks at the scene through an open door.

But the story of the painting plays out elsewhere in the picture, with the two characters—a man and a woman—whom we see straight ahead of us. Since a series of paintings hangs around the room, we may at first think that we're seeing a portrait. In fact it's a mirror, and the figures are the king and queen. The scene, it turns out, is a portrait of portrait painting. The king and queen are posing for their portrait, and they're standing right in the spot that we the viewers occupy; that's why six of the characters in the painting are staring at us, with a variety of expressions—the princess with the look of a beloved, perhaps spoiled daughter, others with looks of respect or concern, Velazquez himself with a look that seems understanding, almost compassionate.

So the picture actually explores ideas about identity, and it does so with a modern sense that who we are is not fixed and simple, but rather an unstable construct. It puts us, ordinary viewers, in the place of the king and queen: for a moment we experience what it's like to be in their shoes, with all eyes turning toward us and with global responsibilities waiting when the portrait session is over. Yet it's also a self-portrait of the artist and a depiction of the process of artistic creation: it forces us to think about how images are constructed, whether by paint or by the mirror itself. All of this takes some time to sort out, and that's yet another message of the painting. In a world of mirrors, painted images, and complex social relations, reality isn't self-evident.