Greatest Paintings: The Ghost of Spain – Velázquez’s Las Meninas

0:02Hello everyone, Tom Holland here and I am joined by the great Laura Cumming and we are looking at painting in history, four paintings that reflect a particular period in history. We'll be looking at the history of the painting itself, the life of the artist, and teasing out the mysteries that shadow all four paintings. And today we are looking at Las Meninas by Diego de la Valesquez, the painting that Laura Cumming, who is joining me, she sees it as the greatest painting of all time. And we will be exploring why.

0:45Hello everybody and welcome to the second in our series on great paintings and how they relate to the historical context and all of that. And my guest today, as it was in our first episode, the previous episode, the great Laura Cumming. And Laura, today we are looking at a painting that is very close to your heart. It is Las Meninas, so that is Maid Servants, Ladies in Waiting, whatever, by Diego de Valesquez. the great 17th century Spanish painter Las Meninas painted in 1656. And it's close to you both because you think it is what the greatest painting? The greatest. The greatest painting of all time.

1:30Yes. But also it's personal to you, isn't it? It is. And I saw it without knowing I was going to see it, which is really how anyone listening to this program, if they can possibly go and just get this same experience I had. My father had died. He was a painter. I was absolutely dejected and I went to Madrid and I had no idea what the Prado had in it. I was very young. I went to the room where it hangs in the Prado and I didn't see it at first. There was a crowd in front of it. There's a crowd in this painting. The crowd started to move and for a very brief moment and this kind of illusion of magic is part of the painting for a very brief moment I thought the people in the painting were real people and I wrote a little account of how it struck me which if you will allow me I will read.

2:23And also it will tell people who've never seen the painting what is in the painting. Yes and what it first looks like. You are here. You have appeared. their eyes announced your arrival all these people looking back at you out of the shadows the little princess and her maids with their ribbons and bows and their shimmering clothes a tiny page and the tall dark painter a massive dog and a lady dwarf the courtiers whispering or wrapped or poised ready in the doorway at the back all these people are gathered here in this place for your presence. They were waiting to see you, and now you've entered the room.

3:04Not the real room in the Prado around you, but the room in the painting as it mysteriously seems. This is the first sensation that strikes when you see Las Meninas in the Prado, a picture the size of life and fully as profound that you are walking into their world, becoming suddenly as present to these people as they are to you. And in that moment, time stills in a flash of light in the darkness. These brilliant little children, the princess and her attendants, twinkling out of a monumental volume of shadow that fills most of the high chamber in which they appear, away down at the bottom in this little pool of light, brief and bright as fireflies.

3:50It's the most spectacular curtain raiser in art, and it sets the whole tenor of the painting. brilliant laura so that's the the opening to your book the vanishing man um a study of belasquez and just listening to you read that in this painting we are in the after wash of the golden age so the golden age was the 16th century the age of philip ii the escorial the spanish armada the treasure fleets coming to iberia from the new world laden down with silver and gold but we're now in the 17th century and there's a sense that Spain's greatness is starting to fade and I suppose the classic illustration of that the classic kind of cultural monument to that is Don Quixote which is all about illusion and reality the interface between what is created and what reality actually is and in a sense Las Meninas is playing with similar things isn't it because it's saying that you know in that account you were saying you are entering a world that is created and what is the relationship of what is created to what is real and that is an issue for the whole spanish court because the show of the court is all about how spain remains the world superpower but the reality is altogether shabbier and more run down thank you for listening subscribe to the rest is history club at the rest is history.com for the entire episode we'll be back next week laura and me with the skating minister by henry rayburn and if you want to hear that and the whole series well you know what you've got to do