What is Las Meninas?
{{italictitle}} [[File:Diego Velázquez Las Meninas Die Hoffräulein.jpg|thumb|300px|Las Meninas]] '''''Las Meninas''''' is an [[oil painting]] by the [[Spain|Spanish]] [[painter]] [[Diego Velázquez]]. The painting hangs in the [[Museo del Prado]] in [[Madrid]], the [[capital city|capital]] of Spain. It was painted in [[1656]]. The word “Menina” means “lady-in-waiting” or “Maid of Honour”, i.e. a girl who serves in a royal court. There is a lot of detail in the painting, and more has been written about it than about almost any other Western painting because it is quite complicated. For example: people do not always agree about who is looking at whom and why they are standing there. == Description of the painting == ''Las Meninas'' shows a large room in the Madrid palace of King Phillip IV of Spain . Several people are in the painting, and we know who they are. Some are looking at one another and others are looking out from the painting at the viewer (the person who is looking at the painting). The person who stands in the middle is the Infanta [[Margarita Teresa of Austria]] (the princess, daughter of the king and queen). She has two maids of honour, one on each side of her, a [[Chaperone (social)|chaperone]], a [[bodyguard]], two [[dwarfs]] and a [[dog]]. Velázquez has also painted himself, standing just behind the princess and her companions. He is standing at the artist’s [[easel]]. He has stopped painting for a moment and looks straight out at the viewer. At the back of the room is a mirror in which we can see the top halves of the bodies of the [[king]] and [[queen]]. This means that the king and queen are the viewers who are looking at the painting. The king and queen are probably being painted by Velázquez, but not everybody agrees with this. Velázquez was very famous in his lifetime. He painted portraits of several royal people at the Spanish court. Philip himself did not like being painted when he was old, but he allowed Velázquez to include him in ''Las Meninas''. He had given Velázquez a special ro