


































Education, Language and Sociology Research 

ISSN 2690-3644 (Print) ISSN 2690-3652 (Online) 

Vol. 3, No. 1, 2022 

www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr 

71 
 

Original Paper 

A Brief Discussion on the Object of Expression in  

Diego Velasquez’s Las Meninas 

Lai Gai1 

1 Research Institute for Global Value Chains, University of   International Business and Economics, 

Beijing, China  

 

Received: March 12, 2022         Accepted: April 19, 2022      Online Published: May 26, 2022 

doi:10.22158/elsr.v3n1p71            URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/elsr.v3n1p71 

 

Abstract 

Las Meninas is a painting by Spanish painter Diego Velasquez painted in 1656. The composition of the 

painting is very complex, consisting of nine people, a dog, mirror reflections of the king and queen, 

paintings on the wall, etc. While among them, which is the main object depicted by the painter, who is 

the hero of the painting, the discussion on this issue has been the research object of experts all the time. 

The author refers to the historical background, painting methods, color application and light treatment 

of the painter, and also refers to the analysis by Michel Foucault and Daniel Arasse, to get a brief 

discussion of the object expressed in this painting. 

Keywords 

Las Meninas, Michel Foucault, Daniel Arasse, object of expression 

 

Las Meninas is one of Spanish painter Diego Velazquez’s greatest paintings and one of the most widely 

analyzed works of Western painting. Diego Velasquez is not only a famous Baroque painter, but also a 

great master of painting who has aristocratic temperament. After being introduced by a count, he became 

Spain’s court painter and lived in the palace of Madrid. He developed a close friendship with the king 

and often produced portraits for him. Las Meninas is just a famous masterpiece he drew in 1656 in request 

of the king. The height of it is up to 3 meters, each object in this painting is just in the same physical size. 

It shows what the daily life liked in the palace: In the quite palace, Velasquez was drawing a couple 

portrait for the king and his wife. At that moment, the princess and her maids happened to come into the 

painting room. This painting has two characteristics: the first one is the custom style. It describes the 

king’s life from an interesting insight; the second one is that the painter broke the established principles 

of creating the Court portrait. He put the King and his wife in a secondary position, instead of putting 

them in the middle of the picture in the traditional way. In fact, in his time, this composition is very bold, 



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more or less a little casual. His portrait of this approach is a kind of court reforms. The on-screen 

characters are no longer a rigid arrangement, but in a state of nature as far as possible. Sophisticated 

dynastic vision is emphasized in this painting. Light and shadow plays an important role in it. This 

painting is undoubted a very great work, on the artistic quality. However, as long as you walk into this 

piece of masterpiece, various issues will follow. First of all, as a general habit of appreciation, we would 

firstly have such a question, who is the hero in this painting? The painter wants us to see whose face? Is 

the las meninas described in the subject, or the little princess whom the light focuses on? Is the aristocratic 

painter who are wearing a huge medal, or the king couple who appear in the mirror? Maybe it is the 

dwarf female with a serious expression, or the person in black who is standing aside a curtain in the 

background and ready to leave but is attracted to something happening? 

For me, the first character I notice is the little princess who are dressed in white in the front of the room. 

She just possesses the middle point of the crowd. Cause her dress is in a light color, which has a strong 

visual tension. And it just creates a visual association with the white smock that the two maids beside her 

are wearing. All these things create a band of light with her in the center. These things lead us to treat the 

little princess as the hero of this picture easily with preconceptions. However, we’ll soon realize that we 

are misguided by the painter who makes use of our habit of appreciation and plays a vision game with 

us. Cause the little princess is not the object of all the sights point to. So the hero of this painting is not 

the princess, and more cannot be the two maids who are standing at her side. 

The most interesting is that Velazquez made his own arrangement in the painting. He was holding a 

palette, standing after a huge drawing board, spiritedly and proudly. It even makes us treat this picture as 

his own portrait. He is also trying to highlight the wearing medal in his chest, which he was once 

dreaming of owning, for it is a signal of his high position. In the picture he is so young, but in fact, he 

was over his sixtieth year at that moment. Many modern researchers believe it was the work of an elderly, 

confident genius. In particular, the San Diego Medal on his chest was so striking that one had to believe 

it might be the hero the artist wanted to show. But history turns out that the medal was added on 

Velazquez’s chest by Philip IV as a tribute to his memory when the work was restored right after his 

death in 1660. Therefore, this conjecture is not untenable. 

Since the artist is not the hero of this painting, then the king and his wife who stood in front of him and 

being reflected in the mirror should be object of this painting. However, this is after all only an 

assumption that we make from our common sense. For the king couple themselves do not appear directly 

in the painting, instead, the reader ourselves are inevitable placed in the position that belongs to them. 

For this view, Michel Foucault in Words and Things-An Archaeology of Human Sciences, pointed out 

that, “We must pretend that we do not know who or what is reflected in the mysterious mirror and 

question about the significance of the existence of this reflection” (1966). “When looking straightly 

across the screen, the subject and the object, the audience and the model, numerously swap roles”. So, 

the painting becomes a “classic representation of the appearance”, which points to “the nature of 

emptiness” “the collapse of the basis of similarity” “cancellation of the main body” and so on. On 



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balance, this is a space with open and free democracy. Foucault’s idea is based on the visual order that 

he established. Based on Foucault’s this perspective, when we look at the painting, the visual center that 

we notice at first is the Princess and the las meninas. As we can see, the Princess is watching something, 

but we do not know what it really is; but it’s obvious that she is also seen by the two maids. While the 

maids and the Princess is just what we are watching in response. We can call it the first group of multiple 

gaze. Then, let’s take a deep look at this picture. You can find that the painter who is standing behind the 

Princess and her maids, is taking a look at something too. What is the object, we can’t tell, but we can 

see that he himself is not only read by that mysterious thing, but also watched by us. This is the second 

group of multiple gaze. If we make a further look at this picture, we can find the individual who is 

standing at the door against the background. He is looking at these two sets of gaze from the opposite 

direction to ours. Furthermore, he is also seen by two different sight from us and the one on whom the 

painter is concentrating. This is the third group of multi-gaze. Finally, we can see a mirror in the painting 

and find that the small princess, the painter and the people at the door may all look at the people who are 

reflected in the mirror. And in response, the one is also looking at them. This is the fourth group of 

multiple gaze. Within each group, we can find the interaction between to see and be seen. And it also has 

this kind of interaction between these four groups. From Foucault’s view, the interaction relationship 

between all of these things are reproduced in order to obtain a visual relationship, namely, the internal 

structure of gaze. 

In other words, in Foucault’s view, this is a painting about painting. It is about to see and be seen and 

also about staring and reproducing on the painting. From it we can deconstruct staring and reproducing. 

At this level, after Foucault’s interpretation, Velazquez’s Las Meninas is no longer merely a painting of 

realism style. 

Relative to Foucault’s point of view, Daniel Arasse criticized Foucault of his removal of the historical 

background of Las Meninas. He pointed that Foucault had made this masterpiece democratization and 

museum-oriented, which is opposite to the painter’s original aim. Arasse even made a comprehensive 

study into the tortuous history of the painting, noting that it was changed from a painting called Family 

Portrait. But whatever Family Portrait or LAS MENINAS, both were made by the artists to adapt to the 

needs of the political situation in the royal family. After made a very detailed analysis to the painting 

scene (including the character’s eyes), Arasse said, through the mirror, the king becomes the one who 

cannot see nothing: the eyes of every character are towards the king. He is looking at everyone present 

in the office of his own Summer Palace. He is also watching them from the background of the screen. In 

fact, this outstanding performance emphasizes that the king possesses a supreme absolute position in the 

dynasty. In a conclusion, his view is that the king couple is the object expression of the painting. 

I am more agree with this view. Firstly, the analysis of a painter’s work cannot be divorced from his own 

identity and the historical environment. As it was described at the beginning of the article. Velasquez is 

the most prominent realism painter in the 17th-century in Span. He made his way from a dilapidated 

Zeilya family to the palace, and established a deep and lasting friendship with the king. Undoubtedly, 



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Philips IV was his most respected and admired object. As you can see, what his works show is all about 

aristocratic elegance and dignity. What’s more, in this painting, according to the historical data, all the 

images contained in it are real people, not a fictional image. In other words, this is a piece of more than 

one character’s plot portrait. All the evidence show that the painter got his inspiration from the typical 

real life in the palace. And it also fully demonstrates the realism skill of this great painter. We can even 

say that he did not belong to the Baroque painters’ team, but was more interested in the principles of 

realism. That’s why he got the praise as “the painter of truth”.  

At the same time, although making a living as a count painter, Velasquez was not just blind to curry favor 

with the power. The great artist was always persistent in the pursuit of artistic freedom in his heart. 

Especially in his later years, he had almost painted anything, and also wanted to draw a number of 

different things in order to achieve the reform of art. Through his inheritance and improvement of Titian, 

he made the natural patterns and colors together. In order to emphasize the noble image of the supreme 

king and his wife, he had to put them in the mirror, so that they can examine other people in the painting 

from two directions-before and after. And the one being examined even includes us standing between 

them and the mirror. Fortunately, Philips IV was a magnanimous monarch. So even if sometimes he’s 

chief artist created a number of adventurous works with adventure spirit, he was also willing to accept. 

All these reasons lead to the wide spread of Las Meninas through ages. Diego Velasquez was hailed as 

one of the most outstanding representatives of Spain’s golden age, has been the pursuit of a number of 

artists of future generations. 

 
References 

Chen Binbin. (2005). Secrets in Art. Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House. 

Daniel, A. (2007). We See Nothing: A Collection of Paintings of a Different Kind. Peking University 

Press.  

Frank, P. (2008). Visual Art History. Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House.  

Geng, Y. Z. (2005). Broken Traces: Re-reading Western Art History. Renmin University Press. 

Hendrik, V. (2005). A Brief History of Western Art. Shaanxi Normal University Press.  

Michel, F. (2001). Words and Things-An Archaeology of Human Sciences. Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore.  

Ouyang, Y. (2009). History of Foreign Art. China Academy of Art Press. 

Paul, J. (2008). History of Art. Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House. 


