Nicholas Mulroy

This is one of the greatest, most beautiful and richest paintings we have. Painted in a room in the Alcazar Palace in Madrid, it’s a glimpse of the daily life of the Royal Family, but so much more. Some have called it “the theology of painting”. Why? It’s an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Who is the subject? The radiant Princess Margarita? Or the clump of slightly blank meninas (ladies-in-waiting) at the front? Or at the painter, the back of whose easel we see? Is he painting us? Or is he painting the figures we see dimly in the mirror (the King and Queen)? Perhaps that unanswered question ennobles the viewer. And who’s that in the doorframe at the back? Is he coming or going? Geometry nerds might like to know that his elbow is the vanishing point of the painting. If you have time on your hands, try to trace an aerial map of who is where, including you. The viewer isn’t included, but is somehow enticed back into a game of mirrors, the strands of this web, spun centuries ago by an utter master.