Power Relations In Diego Velazquezs Las Meninas English Literature Essay

Power Relations In Diego Velazquezs Las Meninas English Literature EssayThe precedent of the moving picture Las Meninas (1656), Diego Velzquez (1599-1660) worked at the court of Philip IV, thus at the centre of the centralised male monarch structure of wizard(a) of the original nation-states of Early Modern Europe. Las Meninas has been argued twain in Velzquez time and in ours to be his masterpiece.My purpose in this essay is to argue for an interpretation of this icon and its shaping by an exploration of power congresss quite than by perspectival considerations. My interest in the present essay will be to analyse Las Meninas within the perspective of power relations, in an effort to interpret an election reading to the literature based splendidly on the technical aspects of the paint. A lot has been written regarding the great unclearness that the house video Las Meninas seals, but, there is a unbelief that we essential ac association in presence of the visual int ricacy of the painting, what indeed did Velzquez paint? I am non looking to provide the final answer to this question in this essay. However, I believe that by analysing Las Meninas within the perspective of power relations, I bottomland contribute to the scholarship on Velzquez and provide an approach that fucking also contribute to the answer of this question.Las Meninas (fig. 1) (Spanish for The Maids of Honour) is an oil on tap painting with 318 cm - 276 cm. The setting is a grown room and it has long been unclear whether the midland represented in the painting is real or imaginary. F. J. Snchez Cantn identified the room by the paintings in it as the main sleeping room of an apartment in the Alczar of Madrid that had been occupied by Prince Baltazar Carlos before its assignment to Velzquez.2However, F. Iiguez Almech was unable, when analysing the seventeenth-century plans of Alczar, to reveal any room that would correspond to the nonp atomic number 18il in the painting, existence possible that Velzquez did not depict any actual room.3Fig. 1. Diego Velzquez, Las Meninas, 1656, Museu Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Available from Museu Nacional del Prado Galera On-Line (accessed 29 frustratech 2010).The painting presents a composition distributed in wellspring organised spatial structure that provides to the depicted room a sensation of realism, proximity and discretion, being the composition concentric, with the Infanta Margarita Mara de Austria as its focal point.4The depth of the painting is accentuated by the frames on the w whole on the proficient, by the raftvas on the left and by the 2 empty chandeliers on the ceiling. In addition, the painting combines discreet colours, providing harmony to the painting (white, grey and black of the attires with details in red, beige of the canvas, and again tones of black and grey in the non-illuminated parts of the room).5On the well(p) of the room, one has an oblique view of the wall with apertures which seem to be windows that let light into the room. On the left, the view of the room is cut by a large canvas seen from the back. The painter himself, Diego Velzquez, is portrayed in front of this canvas with a paintbrush on his hand, who seems to have just stopped working on the canvas for a moment in order to gaze out his models. Velzquez was fifty-seven years old when he multicolor Las Meninas and depicted himself in it, but without wrinkles, white hair, or any other sign that could indicate his actual age. The canvas Velzquez is working on is not subgross to the viewer. More or slight to the centre of the canvas stands a little girl identified as the Infanta of Spain, Doa Margarita Mara de Austria, who also gazes out in the manner of a delineation, and or so who the other figures gravitate . . . like planets of an intricate, subtly ordered system, and reflect her light.6She is surrounded on both sides by two young women attendants (the meninas of the title), being the on e on the left (Doa Mara Agustina Sarmiento de Sotomayor) kneeling at the feet of the Infanta and offering her a bcaro in a tray, while the other on the remedy (Doa Isabel de Velasco) inclines a bit to the Infanta and turns her glance outwards the canvas. To the right of this multitude, in the corner of the canvas, stand two dwarves of distorted appearance, also court attendants. The woman named Mara Barbola gazes outwards, while the midget who steps on the dog is Nicolasico Pertusato. On a more innate plan is Doa Marcela de Ulloa, lady of honour, who turns her dealer to address a man (escort for ladies of the court), who stands beside her and looks outwards. Some distance behind them is the rear wall of the room, which has a door where stands Don Jos Nieto Velzquez, Aposentador of the Queen, also gazing outwards. To the left of Jos Nieto, the world-beater Philip IV and the Queen Mara Ana de Austria are reflected in a reverberate. Some of the figures in the painting present li ttle problem of identification, namely Velzquez and the Infanta the others are less obvious. This identification of the figures in the painting is based on Velzquez earliest biographer, Antonio Palomino, who named the figures in Las Meninas on the basis of the known population of the court in Book terzetto of his Museu Pictrico y Escala ptica, which was first published in 1724.7Palomino also identifies the two paintings in the upper part of the back wall with the then current kingly holdings Minerva Punishing Arachne and Apollos Victory over Marsyas, both originally by Peter Paul Rubens.8The Infanta occupies the centre of the visual think, together with the King and Queens reflection on the mirror and the painter. The superior half of the painting is occupied with lamps and spots of light that enter trough the openings on the right wall there are shadows coating the back superior part of the wall. The perspective is taken from an angle that closes itself in the right with an op ening in the wall. In the left, in some other diagonal plan, the painting that is being painted by Velzquez leaves the figures in second plan and cuts obliquely the space. In the back, the mirror and the door make allusion to unknown spaces, which together with the spatial chassis of the portrayed room open the painting to the exterior and pulls the viewer to inner(a) of the composition. As Madlyn Millner Kahr points out, the mirror in the painting contributes its own special brand of magic. In Las Meninas it directs the observers attention to events going on outside the picture (the presence of the august couple), which in turn brings the observer within the picture area.9On her article Velzquez and Las Meninas, Kahr divides the condition of characters with a wide range of ages and physical types into different groups.10One of these groups is the dog, the midget and the female dwarf. According to Kahr, these three characters form a group apart imputable to their position in sp ace and their compositional unity.11The central group, as Kahr argues, stands behind them, being constituted by the Infanta and the two meninas. The painter, Doa Marcela de Ulloa and the guardadamas forms another group and the last group is composed by the Aposentador of the Queen standing in the stairs and by King Philip IV and Queen Mara Ana reflected on the mirror.12Thus, Kahr divides the characters in groups of three. This division provides unity, coherence and structure to the painting, and by placing the group of the Infanta and the two meninas as the central one, Kahrs group division concurs with Palominos consideration that the painting is a portrait of the Infanta.13The light that enters the room by the right side wall apertures mainly illuminates the Infanta, Doa Maria Agustina Sarmiento and partially the other menina, that are highlighted in relation to the darkness behind them, reinforcing the conception that Las Meninas is a portrait of the Infanta of Spain. Carl Justi also described Las Meninas as a portrait of the Infanta Margarita as the centre of a recurrent scene of the palace life.14Joel Snyder agrees that considering the painting as the portrait of the Infanta Margarita, as Palomino and Carl Justi do, is a movement in the correct direction, but it fails to explain the presence of all the other figures in it that compete for our attention.15Jonathan Brown states that the field of view of the painting is no one in particular, but that the painting is a claim for the nobility of Velzquezs art.16However, Snyder points outTo suggest that Las Meninas is a demonstration of the nobility of painting and of its proper place in the liberal arts, as Jonathan Brown does, is to locate the interest of the painting in the conditions of its origination and in the means employed to produce the demonstration. This is surely interesting and, if correct, revealing but, again, it does not bring us to terms with the subject of the painting with what the paintin g is shove off ensemble.17Firstly, the tout ensemble of the painting may be explored individually (considering the power relations between each figure in the painting), in order to then identify the subject of the painting.In approaching this issue, one should agree that one can identify the presence of the centralised power in the painting Las Meninas. The power in this painting may be recognized in several aspects. There is in the painting two distinct social groups the working class and the one that enjoys the labour of those who work. On the one hand, we have the painter, the maids, the lady of honour, the escort for ladies of the court, the Aposentador of the Queen, and the dwarfs represented while, on the other hand, we have the aristocracy represented in the Infanta that occupies the centre of the painting and King Philip IV and Queen Mara Ana de Austria reflected on the mirror.When one questions why Velzquez depicted himself together with all the members of the august hous ehold, the answer may be that he wanted to indicate that he also belonged to this illustrious circle. Sira Dambe states that in Golden Age Spain, the art of painting, still relegated to the rank of craft, had not yet been accorded follow status with the higher arts, such as music or poetry.18Therefore, this painting may be seen as Velzquezs proclamation of . . . power and status as a creator.19The ecclesiastic power is also present in the cross of the Santiagos Order in the chest of the painter, which was not originally painted by Velzquez, being painted after the artists death by the Kings demand.20When analysing the Fable of Arachne and Las Meninas, Jonathan Brown states, Velzquezs claim for the nobility of his art are firmly embedded in these multi-layered works, and in Las Meninas the gentleman painter, stands confidently at the easel, basking in the glory of the monarchs soul. And on his breast, the vibrant red cross of Santiago marks the artist as a nobleman.21In addition, o ne can also identify the presence of the artistical power of the painter over the remaining figures due to the dominium of the artistic language, but at the same time, the artistic needs to observe to a superior power, and in this case, the kingship. This statement finds support on the magnificent couple pictured in the mirror that accordingly represent the kingly power. On her article Picturing Power Representation and Las Meninas, Amy M. Schmitter affirmsThe Kings representation is a force of power, a manifestation of royal power that embodies, displays, and extends it. It is a representation that acts, that represents by presenting, exhibiting, or exposing titles and qualifications, by figuring them in painting, by being a sign, by bringing to observation, and by playing in public. It thereby constitutes its subject, the royal power and the royal office, by representing it.22One can agree that the depiction of the King Philip IV and the Queen Mara Ana de Austria on the mirror and of the Infanta Margarita as main focus of the painting represents directly in the painting the royal power it represents those that should be looked with reverence and submission. Furthermore, with the glances one receives and returns in the painting, the represented royal power gazes with control and wariness over everyone else.Regarding the power relations between the remaining figures of the painting, one can argue that the meninas, the guardadamas and the lady of honour, by their own social condition are subordinates of the kingship. The two dwarfs are also condemned to the royal power and have as their attend to to entertain the royal household. The dog that is being stepped by the dwarf on the right is condemned to an even lower position (a submissive animal). In this perspective of power relations, the presence of Jos Nieto Velzquez becomes enigmatic. Despite being the Aposentador of the Queen and therefore ruled by the royal power, he is portrayed in profile on the st airs of the back door, seemingly indicating an indecision of staying under the gaze of the royal power or leaving. From this analysis, one can agree that all the figures of the painting are entangled in the webs of power.Although the delimitations of power are well defined in the painting, representing the historical, political and economic conditions of seventeenth-century Spain, another way of looking at this issue is through the indirect allusions also present in the painting, such as the dwarf, positioned in perfect diagonal confederation with the painter. The two associate by contrast the painter as the creator and admirer of what is beautiful, and the dwarf as symbol of deformity. In common, there is the fact that both are represented images of social groups placed aside from power. One should, nevertheless, consider this opposition from another angle. From the contrast itself between what the painter and the dwarf represent, one can obtain an exchange of parts by acknowledgi ng that the arts represent both the sublime as well as the grotesque. Therefore, there is in this aesthetical loyalty a subversion of the institutionalised values of power.The power of kingship is also central in Michel Foucaults chapter on Diego Velzquezs Las Meninas, being this the opening chapter of his book The Order of Things.23According to Foucault the function of the mirror reflection of the King and the Queen is to bring to the painting what is external to it. In the chapter Las Meninas, Foucault attributes the theme of the painting to the external space and gives the Infanta and her maids (internal space) the function of entertaining the King and Queen that are in front of the representation (outside space) as Vlazquezs models.24Foucaults critical analysis derives from the observation angle of the Infanta, the King and Queen in the mirror and how their gazes define the centre of the picture. The mirror in the back leads to the conclusion, as Foucault states, that it is abo ut a question of what looks and what is looked. From these encounters of gazes and perceptions, the author notes that the notion of double arises from this painting. To Foucault the double reveals itself in the painting from inside the painting itself. The painting that Velzquez is painting in the portrait will be the representation of the reflexion of the King and Queen in the mirror at the back.25On the chapter dedicated to Las Meninas, Foucault argues that the Classical age, roughly the period from the seventeenth-century to the eighteenth-century, was a period when the intellectual world focused on the representations of the real. Accordingly, Foucault defines the subject of Las Meninas as the representation itself. To adduce from FoucaultPerhaps there exists, in this painting by Velzquez, the representation as it were of Classical representation, and the definition of space it opens up to us . . . But there, in the middle of this dispersion which is simultaneously grouping to gether and spreading out before us, indicated compellingly from every side, is an essential void the necessary disappearance of that which is its foundation of the person it resembles and the person whose eyes it is only a resemblance. This very subject which is the same has been elided. And representation, freed finally from the relation that was impeding it, can offer itself as representation in its pure form.26Therefore, Foucault argues that in Las Meninas representation tries to interpretate itself. In contemporaneous philosophy, it is the language that is going to establish the relation between the similarities with the world, making possible representation. Thus, one can affirm that the act point from classic epistm to modern epistm is the passage of language as mediator (in representation) to object of knowledge. In the modern epistm, language does not reveal more directly the identity of the world, but it reveals the relations between things and the Man. It is from here that occurs the questioning of Man as centre around whom all the knowledge is created. Thus, Velzquez painting represents what is to come. The modern epistm is anticipated in Velzquezs Las Meninas it is the utopic function of art of anticipating the future. Consequently, to Foucault, Las Meninas is represented in an epistemic system the subject of representation should remain unseeable (the empty space of the kingship is the place that in the modern episteme will be occupied by the Man). Foucault points outAt once object since it is what the artist is write onto his canvas and subject since what the painter had in front of his eyes, as he represented himself in the course of work, was himself, since the gazes portrayed in the picture are all directed toward the fictitious position occupied by the royal personage, which is also the painters real place, since the occupier of that ambiguous place, in which the painter and the sovereign alternate, in changeless flicker, as it we re, is the spectator, whose gaze transforms the painting into object, the pure representation of that essential absence.27Moreover, Foucault argues that the mirror portrayed in Las Meninas portrays the confrontation between representation and reflexion, being that a painting is different from a mirror and a representation goes beyond a reflexion. Therefore, the painting is a representation for the observer, and in the painting of Velzquez one has the painting itself, and inside it one has other represented paintings and also a canvas in first plan viewed from the back. In all, this painting is a representation that has as subject a kind of empty place that we can fill with several models. Foucault argues that instead of instituting a simple relation of mimesis as the main theme of the painting, the figures of the royal couple would be indicated as a kind of essential emptiness.28According to Foucault, the canvas on the left is the place for a dichotomy between visible/invisible. Wha t the painter looks is doubly invisible, because it is not represented in the painting, and because we cannot see ourselves. The mirror in the back is the only visible representation, but despite that fact, no one looks at it. However, what is there represented, has nothing to do with what the painting presents, it reflects something that is exterior to the painting. In the place occupied by the spectator, are the models of the painter. Therefore, the painting allows to see what is doubly invisible. The characters in the mirror are the less noticed, but it is around them that all the representation happens. It is to them that all the other characters look gazing outwards the painting.29Thus, there are three looks that flirt on the outside of the painting of the model, in the moment he is being painted, of the spectator that contemplates the scene, and of the painter in the moment he paints the painting (the one in front of us, and not the one represented in the painting). Quoting from Foucaults The Order of ThingsOf all the figures represented before us, they the royals are also the most ignored, since no one is remunerative the slightest attention to that reflection in the mirror which has slipped into the room behind them all, silently occupying its unsuspected space in so far as they are visible, they are the frailest and the most distant form of all reality. Inversely, in so far as they stand outside the picture and are therefore withdrawn from it in an essential invisibility, they provide the centre around which the entire representation is ordered it is they who are being faced, it is towards them that everyone is turned . . . from the canvas with its back to us to the Infanta, and from the Infanta to the dwarf playing on the extreme right, there runs a curve . . . that orders the whole arrangement of the picture to their gaze and thus makes apparent the true centre of the composition, to which the Infantas gaze and the image in the mirror are both fi nally subject.30One should note here that Foucaults theory emphasises the interior look it constitutes the interior from the exterior as a device build from the outside to the inside of the webs of power. Las Meninas, in Foucaults interpretation help us see this paradigm. By observing the painting, it is noticeable that the modern subject is constituted by surveillance, by the absent look (but at the same time very present), of a power that determines everything, from the characters clothing, gestures, attention, social position, in sum the ways of feeling and seeing are determined by a power that sees all and controls all. In view of these arguments, Foucault points outIn the profound upheaval of such an archaeological mutation, man appears in his ambiguous position as an object of knowledge and as a subject that knows enslaved sovereign, observed spectator, he appears in the place belonging to the king, which was assigned to him in advance by Las Meninas, but from which his rea l presence has for long been excluded.31On his article Velzquez Las Meninas, Leo Steinberg presents similar arguments to Foucaults, including the viewers of the painting as part of a sphere which the partitioning picture plane cuts in two.32As Steinberg points out, if the picture were speaking instead of flashing, it would be saying I see you seeing me I in you see myself seen see yourself being seen and so on beyond the reaches of the grammar.33What particularly interests me in Foucaults and Steinbergs approaches is the placing of the modern Man (in Foucaults case), and the observer (in Steinbergs case), as pivotal figures in the interpretation of Las Meninas, being that in their approaches the Man/observer holds the power he occupies the place of the royal power.To conclude, when one considers all these different approaches to Las Meninas, one is presented with a composite plant web of power relations. Firstly, the painting was produced in seventeenth-century Spain, a origina l nation-state of Early Modern Europe, and in and with the court of Philip IV the centre of a centralised power structure. Secondly, the painting depicts the royal power interiorly with the portrayal of the Infanta and the King and the Queen in the mirror, and at the same time exteriorly trough the implied presence of the royal couple reflected on the mirror. Thirdly, the painting also portrays all those ruled by the monarchic power, such as the maids of honour, the lady of honour, the guardadamas, the dwarfs, the Aposentador of the Queen, and also the painter. Fourthly, it also depicts Velzquezs proclamation of power by depiction himself in the royal household as a nobleman, and at the same time it celebrates his artistical power. Finally, the painting invisibly portrays the Man/observer that occupies the same place of the royal couple outside the painting, and that this way holds the power both as subject of representation and holder of knowledge. Therefore, one can conclude tha t what Velzquez did indeed paint in Las Meninas was power royal power, artistical power, and intellectual power. The setting and the figures of Las Meninas are merely incorporations of power relations, being the painting on his whole a metaphor of power.