Hints and tips:
...And in Velázquez’s “Las Meninas” (1656), the viewer is placed in the shoes of the king and queen of Spain, visible in a mirror, while they are being painted by Velázquez himself, thereby blowing the mind...
...Now numbering 2,300 works, it remains smaller than many European equivalents, and boasts neither destination pictures — such as the Louvre’s “Mona Lisa” (c1503-1519), the Prado’s “Las Meninas” (1799) — nor...
...The greatest hits are many — “Las Meninas”, “The Naked Maja”, “The Three Graces” and more. But how, in a single visit of a few hours, can we avoid the crowds and find some out-of-the-way highlights?...
...We had a seamstress (Menina Francisca) come to the house to make our clothes, as back then you couldn’t buy ready-made in the shops. My mother bought Vogue and Elle patterns so we could be up to date....
...Take the silhouette of her “Menina” dress — it’s crafted from a white duvet-type fabric, with Elizabethan bustle-style hips and undulating puffed sleeves offset by a micro-length hemline....
...Caviar and gold taps are all very well, but 15 minutes alone with Velázquez’s “Las Meninas” might be a luxury greater than either....
...Velázquez’s Las Meninas, a reflective masterpiece that inspired artists down to Picasso, has been joined by two others of his greatest works: The Triumph of Bacchus and The Spinners....
...Freud said he was inspired by an Egyptian tomb family sculpture, but in the games with mirrors, scale, power, virtuosity, Velázquez’s “Las Meninas”, is here too....
...Velázquez’s only “Self-portrait”, apart from that in “Las Meninas”, is a masterpiece of haughty reserve and mystery....
...Three years before “Las Meninas” Velázquez — Philip IV’s court artist — had portrayed Maria Theresa in a dress stitched with gold and pearls....
...performance of verve and dash, a few details — gold-rimmed spectacles, curling moustache — sparklingly picked out, the fleeting form anchored against a copy of the figure of Infanta Margaret Theresa from “Las Meninas...
...It opens in the present day with her observations on a familiar scene — 1656’s almost tyrannically charming “Las Meninas” — but here it feels new and intoxicating as she imagines the lives led by the people...
...Palileo invokes Velázquez’s brilliant puzzle “Las Meninas”, with its echoing dialogue of mirrors, paintings and people, and its shadowy chamberlain holding open a door to another world....
...Memory, too, is the central strand of Jacobs’ last book, Everything is Happening, about his long obsession with Diego Velázquez’s elaborate mirror-game of truth and illusion, “Las Meninas” (The Maids of...
...A century after “Las Meninas” (1656) — Velázquez as model is never more than a breath away throughout this show — Goya dethroned monarchs and made immortal the architects, bankers and civil servants of the...
...It cannot borrow “Las Meninas” but its loans are rare and outstanding....
...The most famous portrayal of himself appears in “Las Meninas”, and it gives very little away, beyond the finesse with which he holds the long brush, the source of his miracles....
...As Elderfield acknowledges in the catalogue, a truly comprehensive survey of the subject would have to include classics such as Velázquez’s “Las Meninas”, which never leaves the Prado in Madrid, and Courbet...
...An exhibition at the Pompidou in Paris in 2010 inspired Lucian to revisit the city and then we went on to Madrid to see one of his favourite works, Velázquez’s “Las Meninas”, at the Prado....
...His Coeli Enarrant Gloriam Dei was both musically and liturgically pleasing, like a pentatonic Palestrina; Menina de Olhos Verdes fitted Luís de Camões’s text to playful rhythms and extended harmonies reminiscent...
...There’s “The Bachelors of Avignon”, in which the Bruces ghost their naked (male) bodies onto the aggressive whores in Picasso’s “Demoiselles”; a black-and-white silkscreened remake of Velázquez’s “Las Meninas...
...For 500 years, men shaped art’s possibilities by painting women: Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa”, Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus”, Velazquez’ Infanta and her maids in “Las Meninas”, Manet’s “Olympia”, Picasso’s “Demoiselles...
...Canvases lent fresh from Picasso’s studio to Tate in 1960 – an opulent oriental interior “Women of Algiers” (1954) and some savage, vital “Las Meninas” canvases (1957) from Barcelona – are reassembled....
...Didn’t I just see those little girls clustered in front of “Las Meninas” in Struth’s “Museo del Prado 7” outside in the café?...
...“Las Meninas” by Velázquez. What is the last thing you read that made you laugh out loud? I re-read Joyce Cary’s The Horse’s Mouth. It’s terrific. What book do you wish you’d written?...
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