Analysis Of Las Meninas In The Maids Of Honor By Diego Velazquez

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In Velazquez' study of physical perspective lies his philosophical: social perspective which is consonant with that found in Cervantes' DON QUIXOTE. It is a perspective which refers to the French Revolution, and, by almost two centuries, the extreme humanistic positivism of Auguste Comte who went so far as to propose the worship of human beings instead of imagined gods (“LAS MENINAS: The World's Best Painting”). Velazquez, who was born in 1599, spent his formative years in a world awash in the full tide of Renaissance thinking, a time when Shakespeare and Cervantes were writing their great humanist works. In spite of the fact that the English calendar and the one used in Spain differed by fifteen days, it is said that both writers died on the The scene is the Spanish court of King Philip 1V. The most obvious focal point of the composition is the young princess, the infant Margarita, who is emphasized by her position in the center of the painting by the light that sines brilliantly on her alone (Klein, 142). By the implied lines created by the gaze of the two maids of honor who bracket her. But the figures out side this central group, that of the dwarf on the right, who is also a maid of honor, and the painter on the left (it’s self portrait of Velazquez), gaze away from the infant (Klein, Perhaps the image on the far wall is not a mirror all, but a painting, a double portrait. It has, in fact, been suggested that both of the single portrait illustrated here are studies for just such a double portrait. Or perhaps the mirror reflects not the king and queen but their double portraits, which Velazquez is painting and which the infanta has come to admire. Whatever the case, Velazquez painting depicts an actual work-in-process (Klein,

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