Greatest Paintings: The Ghost of Spain – Velázquez’s Las Meninas
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What makes Velázquez’s Las Meninas the greatest painting of all time?
Hello everyone, Tom Holland here, and I am joined by the great Laura Cumming, and we are looking at painting in history, four paintings that reflect a particular period in history. We'll be looking at the history of the painting itself, the life of the artist, and teasing out the mysteries that shadow all four paintings. And today we are looking at Las Meninas by Diego de la Velázquez, the painting that Laura Cumming, who is joining me, she sees it as the greatest painting of all time. And we will be exploring why.
Hello everybody and welcome to the second in our series on great paintings and how they relate to the historical context and all of that. And my guest today, as it was in our first episode, the previous episode, the great Laura Cumming. And Laura, today we are looking at a painting that is very close to your heart. It is Las Meninas, so that is maidservants, ladies-in-waiting, whatever. by Diego de Velázquez, the great 17th century Spanish painter, Las Meninas, painted in 1656. And it's close to you both because you think it is, what, the greatest painting?
The greatest. The greatest painting of all time. Yes.
But also it's personal to you, isn't it?
It is, and I saw it without knowing I was going to see it, which is really how anyone listening to this program, if they can possibly go and just get this same experience I had.
How does Las Meninas reflect the fading Spanish Golden Age?
My father had died. He was a painter, and I was absolutely dejected, and I went to Madrid, and I had no idea what the Prado had in it. I mean, I was very young, and I went to the room where it hangs in the Prado, and I didn't see it at first. There was a crowd in front of it. There's a crowd in this painting. And the crowd started to move. And for a very brief moment, and this kind of illusion of magic is part of the painting. For a very brief moment, I thought the people in the painting were real people. And I wrote a little account of how it struck me, which if you will allow me, I will read.
And also it will tell people who've never seen the painting what is in the painting.
Yes, and what it first looks like. You are here. You have appeared. Their eyes announced your arrival, all these people looking back at you, out of the shadows, the little princess and her maids with their ribbons and bows and their shimmering clothes, a tiny page and the tall dark painter, a massive dog and a lady dwarf. The courtiers whispering or rapt or poised ready in the doorway at the back.
What personal connection does Laura Cumming have with Las Meninas?
All these people are gathered here in this place for your presence. They were waiting to see you and now you've entered the room. Not the real room in the Prado around you, but the room in the painting as it mysteriously seems. This is the first sensation that strikes when you see Las Meninas in the Prado. A picture the size of life and fully as profound that you are walking into their world, becoming suddenly as present to these people as they are to you. And in that moment, time stills in a flash of light in the darkness. These brilliant little children, the princess and her attendants, twinkling out of a monumental volume of shadow that fills most of the high chamber in which they appear, away down at the bottom in this little pool of light, brief and bright as fireflies.
It's the most spectacular curtain-raiser in art, and it sets the whole tenor of the painting.
Brilliant, Laura. So that's the opening to your book, The Vanishing Man, a study of Velázquez. And just listening to you read that, in this painting, we are in the afterwash of the Golden Age. So the Golden Age was the 16th century, the age of Philip II, the Escorial, the Spanish Armada, the treasure fleets coming to Iberia from the New World, laden down with silver and gold. But we're now in the 17th century, and there's a sense that Spain's greatness is starting to fade. I suppose the classic illustration of that, the classic cultural monument to that is Don Quixote, which is all about illusion and reality, the interface between what is created
How does Las Meninas challenge the boundaries between viewer and artwork?
and what reality actually is. And in a sense, Las Meninas is playing with similar things, isn't it?
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What makes Velázquez’s Las Meninas the greatest painting of all time?
0:02–1:43
2
How does Las Meninas reflect the fading Spanish Golden Age?
1:43–2:55
3
What personal connection does Laura Cumming have with Las Meninas?
2:55–4:43
4
How does Las Meninas challenge the boundaries between viewer and artwork?
4:43–5:06
5
What is the relationship between illusion and reality in Las Meninas?
5:06–5:33
Speakers
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