Spanish court painter of Las Meninas
Chief court painter of Spain’s Golden Age, revered by countless later masters as "the painter of painters." His brushwork looks loose and offhand, yet coalesces from a few steps back into astonishing reality. His masterpiece Las Meninas is so strange in composition — drawing the painter himself, the princess, the maids, the king in the mirror, and the viewer all into one space — that it became the most-discussed painting in the history of art. Three centuries later, Picasso painted dozens of variations on it in homage.
In Las Meninas, Velázquez painted himself into the picture: he stands before a great canvas, looking back at "us" — while in the mirror at the back of the room, the king and queen appear. And so viewer, sitter, painter, and the figures in the mirror shift layer over layer, and who is looking at whom, who is the true subject, became a riddle with no set answer, debated for more than three centuries.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.