The painting is built around an unanswered question, and the question is the painting's actual subject. Velázquez stands behind a large canvas at the left edge of the picture, brush in hand, looking out at the viewer. We cannot see what he is painting. In a mirror at the back wall appear two reflected faces, identifiable as Philip IV and Mariana of Austria, the King and Queen of Spain. The reflection implies the royal couple is standing approximately where the viewer is standing. Velázquez may be painting them. They may be looking at the Infanta and her entourage in the foreground. They may be looking at us. The painting will not say.
The choice was radical at the time. Spanish royal portraiture in 1656 was a deeply codified genre with a defined viewer position (the royal patron, who paid for the work) and a defined visual hierarchy (the patron is the most important figure, larger, central, lit). Las Meninas violates the codification in every dimension. The royal couple is not the largest figure. They are not central. They are not even properly inside the picture, only present as a reflection. The Infanta Margarita and her entourage of meninas, dwarf Maribárbola, court jester, and sleeping mastiff dominate the canvas instead. The painter himself is given as much pictorial weight as the royal subjects. The painting reconfigures the entire economy of looking that royal portraiture depended on.
Velázquez was painting for the King; the King was the painting's intended viewer; the King recognised what Velázquez had done. Philip IV gave Velázquez the Cross of Santiago shortly after he saw the finished work. The red cross painted on Velázquez's chest in the picture was added later, by the King's own hand according to one tradition, to acknowledge the honour. The painter has placed himself among the royal household and the King has confirmed the placement. Foucault opened The Order of Things in 1966 with twelve pages on this canvas, arguing that the painting marks the moment European art becomes self-conscious of its own gaze. He is right, but he understates the cost: Velázquez has redrawn the relationship between painter, patron, and subject, with the patron's blessing, and the painting itself is the document.
