"Meninas" Velazquez and Picasso: What are the similarities and differences between the masterpieces of the same name

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The famous painting "Meninas" belongs to the Spanish artist Diego Velazquez. He painted his masterpiece in 1656 while working at the court of King Philip IV. The painting of the same name is also in the work of Picasso. Inspired by the painting by Velazquez (which Picasso saw for the first time at the age of 14), the artist decided to write his own version of the famous Menin. Literally "Las Meninas" in translation from Spanish means "maids waiting". The two works are separated by 300 years and, very surprisingly, reflect completely different meanings.

"Meninas" by Velazquez

Diego Velazquez (1599–1660) was a court painter to King Philip IV of Spain. The latter donated the master a personal studio in the royal palace to create works of art for the king, as well as portraits and magnificent paintings documenting the achievements of the royal family.

Velazquez wrote the Meninas in 1656. The work had various titles, including The Family of King Philip IV. By the way, the painting was miraculously saved from the fire of 1734 in the Alcazar, where Velazquez lived and worked, although it had to be restored. Ferdinand VII donated it to the Prado Museum, where it appeared in the first catalog in 1819. The Portuguese term "meninus" meaning "little child" was used at the time to refer to young noble women who were chosen as maids of honor in the service of the royal family.

In his Meninas, Velazquez depicts a self-portrait in the very act of painting, demonstrating that his craft requires immediate action. The maids lean towards the princess, who has slightly turned her head, the man and the nun in the background are talking, the hero on the stairs glances back. The little boy in the foreground playfully nudges the dog with his foot. Among the many art pieces hung in the room, the mirror next to the open door reflects the image of King Philip IV and Queen Mariana. They seem to be looking at their five-year-old daughter and her entourage, which includes a maid of honor, a dwarf, and a dog. In this sense, the painting is both a portrait of the royal family and a self-portrait of the artist, which shows not only how he looks and how he works, but also demonstrates the fame of the master (after all, the royal family themselves are his clients).

Pablo Picasso first saw Velazquez's Las Meninas when he was 14 years old. It was a turning point in his life - he was still looking for the meaning of life, but he already felt his artistic talents. A few months after he saw the masterpiece "Menina", seven-year-old blond sister of Picasso Maria de la Concepcion died of diphtheria. Picasso and his family (especially his father) never recovered from the loss that plagued Picasso for the rest of his life. In 1897, at the age of 16, less than a year after the death of his sister, he created his first sketch dedicated to the characters of the Meninos - Maria Agustina (maid) and Maria Margarita (infanta). It is no coincidence that the heroines were blondes (in memory of their deceased sister). But the really greatest versions of "Menin" Picasso wrote decades later.

"Meninas" by Picasso

In the summer of 1957, Picasso (who by this time had become director emeritus of the Prado National Museum in Madrid) turned the third floor of his house in Cannes, southern France, into a painting studio. While in this studio from August 17 to December 30, 1957, he worked on a large series of 58 canvases in almost complete isolation, which allowed very few visitors to see his work. 44 works in the series were directly inspired by Diego Velazquez's masterpiece Meninas.

The work of Picasso was also used as a reference point for depicting his jesters and dwarfs. The cycle is both a remake of one of the most important works in the history of Spanish painting, and a commentary on the events in Spain, which Picasso observed during his exile in France. The painting was painted twenty years after Guernica and continues the political protest of this early painting against the treatment of Spanish republicans in Spain.

At the time that Picasso had just begun work on the cycle, he was invited to the Amnesty for Spain campaign to free the Spanish Republicans, who were still imprisoned eighteen years after the end of the Spanish Civil War. Picasso himself donated the series to a museum in Barcelona in May 1968 in memory of the Catalan sculptor Jaime Sabartes, who died in the same year. Picasso told Sabartes in 1950: “If someone wants to copy the Meninas in good faith, for example, to reach a certain level, and if it was me, I would say … what if you put them a little to the right or to the left? I will try to do it my own way, forgetting about Velazquez. So little by little they would be disgusting Meninas for a traditional artist, but they would be my Meninas.

Comparison of canvases

1. In the work of Picasso, all the figures from the canvas of the old master are present, playing identical roles and occupying similar positions. 2. The image of the artist himself has more impressive dimensions than in the version of Velazquez. This, of course, is a tribute to the old master as a creator (the viewer, for sure, noticed that the artist has two palettes in his hand in Picasso's painting - this is the artist's praise for the brilliant talent of Velazquez).

3. While in Picasso's version the light floods the room, in Velazquez's original the atmosphere is more subdued and Picasso's dog Lumb takes the same position as the seated mastiff in the older Spaniard's work. 4. The figure of Princess Margarita deserves special attention. This heroine was especially important to Picasso. Picasso wrote his "Meninas" at the age of 75, this age was symbolically important for the artist, because Picasso's father died at the age of seventy-five years. This period triggered numerous visions of his own mortality, which inevitably awakened memories of his sister's death. Looking at the Velazquez variations of the late 1950s, one can see that the image of his young blonde sister is clearly comparable to that of the blonde Infanta. This image of the Infanta evokes another figure - Picasso's daughter Paloma, who was about the same age as his late sister and Infanta at the time of the creation of these paintings. Not surprisingly, given the symbolism of numbers and memories, Picasso dedicated fifteen separate paintings to the Infanta. All of them are depicted in different ways, each of which was very different from all the others. After completing these works, Picasso briefly turned his artistic attention to a completely different topic - pigeons.

5. Velazquez's vertical format is replaced by Picasso's horizontal composition. 6. In Velazquez's work, the composition revolves around the Infanta Margarita. But in Picasso's painting the Infanta still plays an important role, but no less significant is the figure of the artist, who is depicted in a disproportionate size, thereby reinforcing the idea that the most important thing in all creativity is the artist himself. 7. Another important aspect is the processing of light and color. This change directly affects the brightness of the picture: large windows open on the right, which remain closed in Velazquez's works. The lack of color in Picasso's works contrasts with the brightness of Velazquez. In Picasso, black and white dominate the composition on purpose. But the color palette appeared in subsequent interpretations.

In conclusion, I would like to mention the words of Picasso about the painting by Velazquez: “What a painting“Meninas”! What a reality! Velazquez is a true artist of reality. Regardless of whether his other paintings are good or bad, this one is adorable and totally successful anyway!"