Las Meninas

Velázquez, painter to King Philip IV of Spain, shows the five year old princess Margarita Teresa with her maids of honour, the meninas, in a room of the royal palace in Madrid. He put himself in the picture at work on a huge canvas, and the king and queen appear only in the mirror at the back, as if they stood where we do. The red cross on his chest is that of the Order of Santiago, which he only received in 1659, three years later. The painting was damaged but saved when the palace burned in 1734. It has been in the Prado since the museum opened in 1819.

Medium

Oil on canvas

Size

276 x 318 cm

Where

Museo del Prado, Madrid

Photo from Wikimedia Commons, public domain.