Picasso Does Velázquez

During the summer of 1957, Picassoworked on a large series of fifty-eight canvases in near isolation, allowing few visitors to see his work. Forty-four of these canvases were directly inspired by Diego Velázquez’s masterpiece Las meninas (ca. 1656), which he had first seen as an adolescent at the Prado and used as a model for copying his jesters and dwarfs.

All of the figures from the old master’s canvas are present, playing the same roles and occupying similar positions. Investigating the complex spatial organization and figure grouping of Velázquez’s famous canvas, Picasso employs an effectual and fragmented black, gray, and white palette in order to provide structure to the space and its figures. Velázquez himself looms larger in Picasso’s version than in his own, an homage to the old master as creator, and holds two palettes rather than one, though neither canvas reveals what the artist is painting.

The entire series is on view in the Museu Picasso and it is a marvel to behold. By painting so many variations, he sought to understand the key elements of a work he so admired while also giving his Meninas a life of their own.