Las Meninas

For Matt's 33rd birthday last weekend (Happy Belated, honey!), I had a couple of pictures framed as part of his birthday gift. We have several unframed prints that we've collected from various trips over the years and they're starting to collect dust on a shelf instead of being admired on the wall (as was originally intended). The prints that I had framed were two different versions of Diego Velazquez's Las Meninas.
 

I love this painting. We saw the real thing at The Prado Museum in Madrid last year during during our Spain trip and ended up purchasing a copy on canvas in the museum's gift shop.

I first realized how much I love art museums the summer before my freshman year of college, when we spent some time at the Louvre in Paris. I. Fell. In. Love. One day in the museum was not nearly long enough, and if it hadn't been for my sisters embarrassing the crap out of me by wandering up to random paintings and (loudly) declaring in their best "French" accents (ala Lumiere), "Muwahaha, look at zis paint-iiing!", I could have spent an entire month in the museum. So, naturally, taking a trip to a city with another world famous art museum required a dedicated stop to peruse some artwork - this time without embarrassing 16 and 14 year old sisters.

The print is a portrait of the "infanta Margarita" (1651-1673), who was the daughter of King Felipe IV and Maria de Austria. She's standing in the hall of Madrid's Alcazar Palace, surrounded by servants, or "Las Meninas" (the maids of honour/ladies in waiting).

Velazquez included a self portrait of himself; he stands with his paintbrush behind a canvas on the left-hand side of the painting.

The neatest aspect to this painting is the perspective. Behind Margarita's right shoulder is what appears to be a hazy painting on the wall. It's actually a mirror that reflects back what everyone in the painting is viewing - the king and queen. The painting is of King Phillip IV's and Queen Mariana of Austria's perspective as they stand for a portrait for their artist, Diego Velazquez.

So, why would I get this framed for Matt's birthday? Like Matt gives a crap about some painting from the 17th Century, right? Well, later on in our trip, we spent some time at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona and wandered upon this...

It's one of 58 (yes, 58!) versions of Las Meninas that Pablo Picasso painted in 1957. (See here for some examples). They are such an incredibly different take on the original and we really enjoyed spending a good amount of time looking at each one (the Picasso Museum has the entire 58-piece collection).

Matt could really appreciate this. I think he was really intrigued by the question of "how did that guy's mind translate A into B?!"

So, we picked up a print in the museum's gift shop to go along with our print of the original version.

I'm really happy with how they turned out. I had them put in matching frames so that they would somewhat coordinate, but they're such different styles, that I imagine anyone giving the two pictures a cursory glance might wonder why in the world we'd hang two very different paintings on the same wall.