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Ménines (in Spanish: Tired Meninas ), also known under the name the family of Philippe IV , is one of the most famous paintings of Diego Vélasquez. The table is presented to the Musée of Prado of Madrid.

Description

Completed in 1656, it represents the infante Marguerite, girl of Philippe IV, Marianne of Austria and its lady-in-waitings. At the bottom of the part the royal couple in the reflection of a mirror appears (one will think of the convex mirror being on the wall of the bottom in table the husbands Arnolfini of Jan van Eyck). With the left of the table, Vélasquez was represented painting.

Analyzes

All the mystery of this table lies in the presence of the painter and the reflection of the monarchs. Is it about a representation of a meeting of painting? What makes Don Jose Nieto in the content of the table? The process used is named Mise in abyme .

Michel Foucault in the words and the things makes a masterly analysis of this table. The spectator discovers little by little that in the content, among the section of wall covered with portraits, one of them has a strange reflection, which makes think of a mirror. He includes/understands whereas the royal couple is reflected there. Then the glance of the spectator returns towards the front of the scene, towards Vélasquez painting (its brush has just left the fabric). The glance of the painter goes beyond the framework of the table, it looks at the royal couple which is further, in the place even of the spectator. The painter then crosses the glance of the spectator who looks at the table, and which, at the time even of this exchange of glances, becomes itself, in one moment, the model of the table.

This impression is all the more seizing when one is, in flesh and bone, in front of the glance of the painter, with the museum of Prado. The character, in the content, seems to hesitate between outside and interior, in front or behind: he is side, and looks at the whole of the scene. Its presence echoes all this set of glances: who is looked at, who looks at? who is in front of the fabric, which is behind?

Foucault underlines the richness of this work whose center is the back of an invisible table under development: “we do not know who we are nor what we make”.

In fact, the table represents a familiar scene with the courses European. Vélasquez, as an official painter of the court of Spain, was held to carry out portraits of the royal family. And it is what it tries to appear in this table all integrating there the spectator of the table as a subject and observer.

As a Subject: the analysis of the table reveals at the bottom of the part the presence of a mirror in which is reflected a a little ghostly couple. They well are not distinguished, in any case not rather well to identify them directly; but several elements of the table allow it indirectly. The contemporaries of painting thus recognized the workshop of the painter and the layout of the premises. At the bottom of the part, blocking the access, this attentive character is in fact the bodyguard personal of the king. The characters between the painter and his subjects are all known. Obviously, the whole of these indices, the presence and the attitude of the characters authorize us to conclude that it is indeed the royal couple which is vis-a-vis Vélasquez, that they are the subject of the sitting described by this table, and which it is well their reflection that one sees at the bottom of the part in the mirror. However such as the table is structured, and if the glances of the characters well are observed, someone else is held at the sides of the royal couple, somebody which one is unaware of the identity. In a certain way, it is this mysterious witness who seems the true subject of attention of the table and whom the glances follow to the manner of that of the Mona Lisa of Vinci

As a Spectator, a discrete element challenges us. Indeed, conventions of the time required that the painted subjects be always enlightened since the left of the table. However if it is the case while being placed from the point of view of Vélasquez represented on the table carrying out its work of portraitist, that is not it if one places oneself from the point of view of the spectator: you and I see well that on this table the light arrives of the right-hand side and not of the left? In other words, while carrying out a chronicle of its daily newspaper, almost instantaneous, Vélasquez manages to play with and to overcome pictorial conventions of the time; and it carries out this without transgressing them for as much! And while doing that, it propels the spectator inside the table. It makes a subject of it, and places it at the right-hand side of the king.

A last element adds savor to Ménines. If the problem of lighting is solved, the mirror which one sees at the bottom could simply be a table.

Anecdote

Between August and December 1957, Picasso painted 58 fabrics different making from interpretations on the topic of Ménines. A great number are presented to the Musée Picasso of Barcelona.

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