Focus on this artwork and discuss the Interpretation.
The elusiveness of Las Meninas, according to Dawson Carr, "suggests that art, and life, are an illusion".  The relationship between illusion and reality were central concerns in Spanish culture during the 17th century, figuring largely in Don Quixote, the best-known work of Spanish Baroque literature. In this respect, Calderón de la Barca's play Life is a Dream is commonly seen as the literary equivalent of Velázquez's painting:Jon Manchip White notes that the painting can be seen as a résumé of the whole of Velázquez's life and career, as well as a summary of his art to that point. He placed his only confirmed self-portrait in a room in the royal palace surrounded by an assembly of royalty, courtiers, and fine objects that represent his life at court. The art historian Svetlana Alpers suggests that, by portraying the artist at work in the company of royalty and nobility, Velázquez was claiming high status for both the artist and his art, and in particular to propose that painting is a liberal rather than a mechanical art. This distinction was a point of controversy at the time. It would have been significant to Velázquez, since the rules of the Order of Santiago excluded those whose occupations were mechanical. Kahr asserts that this was the best way for Velázquez to show that he was "neither a craftsman or a tradesman, but an official of the court". Furthermore, this was a way to prove himself worthy of acceptance by the royal family.Michel Foucault devoted the opening chapter of The Order of Things (1966) to an analysis of Las Meninas. Foucault describes the painting in meticulous detail, but in a language that is "neither prescribed by, nor filtered through the various texts of art-historical investigation". Foucault viewed the painting without regard to the subject matter, nor to the artist's biography, technical ability, sources and influences, social context, or relationship with his patrons. Instead he analyzes its conscious artifice, highlighting the complex network of visual relationships between painter, subject-model, and viewer:We are looking at a picture in which the painter is in turn looking out at us. A mere confrontation, eyes catching one another's glance, direct looks superimposing themselves upon one another as they cross. And yet this slender line of reciprocal visibility embraces a whole complex network of uncertainties, exchanges, and feints. The painter is turning his eyes towards us only in so far as we happen to occupy the same position as his subject.
For Foucault, Las Meninas illustrates the first signs of a new episteme, or way of thinking. It represents a midpoint between what he sees as the two "great discontinuities" in European thought, the classical and the modern: "Perhaps there exists, in this painting by Velázquez, the representation as it were of Classical representation, and the definition of the space it opens up to us ... representation, freed finally from the relation that was impeding it, can offer itself as representation in its pure form."
Now he (the painter) can be seen, caught in a moment of stillness, at the neutral centre of his oscillation. His dark torso and bright face are half-way between the visible and the invisible: emerging from the canvas beyond our view, he moves into our gaze; but when, in a moment, he makes a step to the right, removing himself from our gaze, he will be standing exactly in front of the canvas he is painting; he will enter that region where his painting, neglected for an instant, will, for him, become visible once more, free of shadow and free of reticence. As though the painter could not at the same time be seen on the picture where he is represented and also see that upon which he is representing something."
In his 2015 analysis, Xavier d'Hérouville brings the painting closer to its first name, namely "The Family of Philippe IV", which at the time earned it the term "theology of painting" by Luca Giordano, contemporary painter of Velázquez. Through this representation, the painter would have conceptualized the divine view of his creation. When the spectator places himself in front of the canvas, in place of the King's study for which this painting was very exclusively intended, he finds himself instantly invested with the divine power, that of "seeing without being seen" the Family of Philip IV. The interface that constitutes this canvas must therefore be considered as a "one-way mirror" in which each of the protagonists of this representation looks at themselves, and behind which the monarch invests divine power, and his wife, can at leisure and in complete discretion to contemplate their life's work, their "Family", in the broadest sense of the term. Further still, this canvas can be seen not only as a summary of the state of advancement of his art at the time of painting, but also as a curriculum vitæ of Velázquez's life and career. The latter having gone so far as to represent himself in this "fresco" at three key periods of his own existence within the Court of Spain: in the background and to the left, as the King's painter, then to the right this time, at the very heart of the Family of Philip IV, alongside the governess, as valet of the King's bedroom, and finally at the back and in the center, camped on the stairs, as Aposentador or Marshal of the Palace, the supreme function he exercised as the King's best friend and confidant.
Luca Giordano Michel Foucault liberal Spanish Baroque literature court courtier self-portrait Las Meninas curriculum vitæ The Order of Things right episteme Baroque Calderón de la Barca's Order of Santiago Don Quixote one-way mirror left Spanish Baroque Svetlana Alpers