6. development of the series6.a. paraphrases alluding directly to velázquez’s las meninas picasso...

Picasso’s Las Meninas is a series formed by 58 oils divided into: 44 interpretations

alluding directly to Velázquez’s painting, 9 scenes of his pigeon loft, 3 landscapes

and 2 free interpretations. Picasso understood them as a set and donated them to the

Museu Picasso de Barcelona as such. Velázquez’s tableau vivant is turned into a dyna-

mic series, full of stimuli and incitements, projected as a great stage play, with open

dramatic art, whose actors are directed by a director who is a lover of freedom and

improvisation. Throughout the series Picasso sets forth, as formerly Velázquez had

done, the ambiguity of outer reality and pictorial reality, the coexistence of two

inseparable worlds: the world of life and the world of art.

The serial form of these variations means that the canvases emerged correlatively

from 17th August, when Picasso started the series, to 30 December when he com-

pleted it. On one day he might work on one or more paintings. After the first seven-

teen alluding directly to the original work, the same day as he painted the Infanta,

he worked on two out of the nine pigeon canvases he was to produce. Then he

returned to the paraphrases of the palace studio. Later he paused again briefly and

painted three landscapes. Two free interpretations enrich the series which ends with

the menina Isabel de Velasco taking her leave of the public after the performance of

this great theatrical production.

6.a. Paraphrases alluding directly to Velázquez’s Las Meninas

Picasso begins the series with the full scene. He puts all his cards on the table and

generously shows the original impulse for his research. After the introduction he

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[ 6. DEVELOPMENT OF THE SERIES

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presents the characters, individualised or in groups, with whom he proceeds to

develop the plot combining association and transgression.

On 17 August the first work was born, the great canvas which opens the series (fig.

1). It is the largest canvas painted by Picasso after the Guernica and largest of all the

paraphrases in the Meninas series.

Picasso displays great respect for the original, keeping the scene and its characters,

although he changes the vertical format for a horizontal one. He also takes some

liberties which give a new reading to the work, slightly moving the central figures

to the right of the viewer and giving some of them new dimensions, as we shall see.

Another variant of Picasso’s great canvas is that he opens all the shutters of the

spacious palace room looking onto the little plaza, so that his paintings are im-

pregnated with the brilliant Mediterranean light.

Picasso keeps all Velázquez’s characters in their places. The two main trios, one

formed by the Infanta of Spain Margarita Maria of Austria, the menina Maria Agusti-

na Sarmiento and the painter himself, Diego Velázquez de Silva; the other by the

menina Isabel de Velasco, the macroencephalic dwarf of German origin Maribárbola

and the Italian dwarf and king’s valet Nicolasito Pertusato who is poking the dog

with his foot. Here Picasso takes the liberty of replacing the Habsburgs’ noble court

mastiff with Lump, the dachshund given to him as a gift by his friend the photo-

grapher David Douglas Duncan. Further back are Marcela de Ulloa, head of the

queen’s ladies-in-waiting, and beside her the chamberlain identified by some as

Diego Ruiz de Ancona. In the background on the threshold is the queen’s quarter-

master José Nieto.

52 PICASSO’S LAS MENINASC

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1. LAS MENINAS (group)Unsigned. Dated 17.8.57 on the back (Cannes)Oil on canvas194 x 260 cmMPB 70.433© Photo AFM, Museu Picasso, Barcelona

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2. LAS MENINAS

(infanta Margarita María)Unsigned. Dated 20./8./57 on the back (Cannes)Oil on canvas100 x 81 cmMPB 70.434© Photo AFM, Museu Picasso, Barcelona

3. LAS MENINAS

(María Agustina Sarmiento)Unsigned. Dated 20./8./57 and 57 (erased), and 26 on the back(Cannes)Oil on canvas46 x 37,5 cmMPB 70.435© Photo AFM, Museu Picasso, Barcelona

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Picasso began the series with great economy of colour and dyed the canvas grey.

The black and white allowed him to structure the space more comfortably and to

better study the placement of the figures. He had previously painted some can-

vases as grisailles, for example the Painter and his Model in the Musée Picasso of Paris

mentioned above, his contemporary and complementary oil The Fashion Designer’s

Studio in the Centre Georges Pompidou / Musée National d’Art Modern, in Paris,

and the Guernica, to which he now referred by keeping some aspects of its com-

position formed by a central triangle and two vertical panels. In the great Las Meni-

nas oil he did not skimp on nuances or gradations. These give the room a hand-

some spectacular monochrome filled with light and enriched in some areas with

light notes of pinkish colour, of great subtlety and visual beauty, which he main-

tained in the canvases immediately following. In the midst of the interpretative

period, exceptionally, he showed the work to his friend Pignon who was staying

at the villa. Pignon told Hélène Parmelin, also staying there: “The Meninas is an

enormous grey canvas around which light circulates in total silence and the most

surprising thing of all is the painter himself, Velázquez, constructed violently,

almost in cubist style and painted before his easel in a warm grisaille. He looks

like a monk (...)”

Picasso worked the whole series with an analytical spirit. He carefully observed the

formal language of Velázquez. In the grip of an unprecedented pictorial canni-

balism, he studied the great canvas, assimilated it, decomposed it and recomposed

it to the point of satiety. He treated the space in a cubist manner by means of super-

imposed planes, giving a structured view of the palace room which maintains the

depth of the original. Before the viewer there appears an amalgam of structures

which to the right diminishes in favour of elliptical scantily worked forms. He links

characters such as the lady-in-waiting Marcela de Ulloa and the court chamberlain

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with the architecture of the room in such a way that they become real pieces in a

puzzle.

The centre of the composition continues to be the Infanta Margarita Maria, who

shares with the two meninas this historical triangle whose longevity is perpetuated

over the centuries. The triangle however is distorted by Picasso who moves these

central figures to the right, to the point of almost superimposing the menina Isabel

de Velasco on Maribárbola. This slight shift turns the equilateral triangle marked in

Velázquez’s work by the Infanta’s head, José Nieto in the doorway and the mirror

into an isosceles triangle in Picasso’s version.

In the background, on the threshold, we see the queen’s chamberlain José Nieto,

whose bent arm is made by some into the centre of the perspective of the spatial

composition. Here Picasso portrays him in the reverse position to how Velázquez

painted him, and so his left leg, if prolonged, becomes a line dividing the Infanta’s

body lengthways. The court chamberlain shares with the painter the view of the

monarchs, both the natural reality and the pictorial fiction, since he can see the can-

vas being painted by the artist.

The ‘door opener’ plays a key compositional role with the Infanta, the centre of the

canvas and, with the mirror that is the centre of the room, Velázquez masterfully

used the baroque fascination for creating movement and different focal points. By

shifting the central figures, Picasso links the Infanta and the court official in a more

tense composition.

In Las Meninas, the gaze takes on a basic role by linking some of the figures with one

other, while others direct their gaze outside the pictorial frame, to the space be-


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4. LAS MENINAS

(infanta Margarita María)Unsigned. Dated 21./8./57. on the back (Cannes)Oil on canvas100 x 81 cmMPB 70.436© Photo AFM, Museu Picasso, Barcelona

5. LAS MENINAS


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6. LAS MENINAS

(infanta Margarita María)Unsigned. Dated 26./8./57, and27 (erased) on the back (Cannes)Oil on canvas41 x 32,5 cmMPB 70.438© Photo AFM, Museu Picasso, Barcelona

7. LAS MENINAS

(infanta Margarita María)Unsigned. Dated 27./8./57. on the back (Cannes)Oil on canvas40,5 x 33 cmMPB 70.439© Photo AFM, Museu Picasso, Barcelona

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fore them, which causes “as many models as viewers” to be accepted, as Foucault

notes when describing the gaze of Velázquez. Foucault’s structuralist view defines

the Velázquez painting as a “web of feints”. In the space in front of the painting,

watcher and watched interchange endlessly. These games shared through the gaze

did not go unnoticed by Picasso, who in some of his works was in the habit of

offering an exchange of gazes which often transcended the pure visual act and

involved his characters and sometimes the viewer too in complicities of a very

different nature. In reality what there is in both canvases is a clear appeal to the

viewer who is involved in a three-way game: artist, model and viewer. Picasso had

already worked on this in two of his masterpieces: Les demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) and

Guernica (1937). As Leo Steinberg noted when studying Les demoiselles d’Avignon, the

unity of this painting lies above all in the surprised awareness of a viewer who sees

him or herself seen.” Thus, in these two canvases and in Las Meninas, Picasso suc-

ceeds in surprising the viewer and remove him or her away from historical and

mythological narrative to a “Look at me, I’m looking at you” situation.

Velázquez portrayed himself by means of an ingenious system of ambiguities

which Picasso was undoubtedly aware of. Velázquez stands before the great canvas

looking at the space he has in front of him, where the object, the model he is going

to paint, is, and also the viewer. His arm is bent so that the brush - which he con-

trolled with absolute brilliance - in his hand can take up paint from the palette in

his other hand in order to paint the king and queen. On his gaze depends the

model, the material he is going to create and the canvas which is going to im-

mortalise it. Gaze and hand are the metaphor for the true intellectual power of the

artist. The work begins and ends with the painter: without him there is no

creation. He is the true protagonist.

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8. LAS MENINAS


9. LAS MENINAS

(infanta Margarita María)Unsigned. Dated 27/8/57on the back (Cannes)Oil on canvas33 x 24 cmMPB 70.441© Photo AFM, Museu Picasso, Barcelona

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6. development of the series6.a. paraphrases alluding directly to velázquez’s las meninas picasso...

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