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

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Hello, 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.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the second in our series on great paintings and how they relate to the historical context and all of that.

My guest today, as it was in our first episode, the previous episode, The Great Laura Coming.

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. It's close to you both because you think it is what? The greatest painting? The greatest. The greatest painting of all time. The greatest. Yes. But also it's personal to you, isn't it?

It is. 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 and I was absolutely dejected. 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 In front of it. There's a crowd in this painting. The crowd started to move. For a very brief moment, and this illusion of magic is part of the painting, for a very brief moment, I thought the people in the painting were real people. I wrote a little account of how it struck me, which, if you will allow me, I will read.

Of course. Also, it will tell people who've never seen the painting what is in the painting.

Yes, and what it first looks like. 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 courteous whispering or rapt 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. Not the real room in the Prada 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 Prada, 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 attendance, 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.

It's the most spectacular curtain razor in art, and it sets the whole tenor of the painting.

Brilliant, Laura. That's the opening to your book, The Vanishing Man: A Study of Balazquez. Just listening to you read that, in this painting, we are in the afterwash of the golden age. 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. I suppose the classic illustration of that, the classic 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. In a sense, Las Meninas is playing with similar things, isn't it? Because it's saying that 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? That is an issue for the whole Spanish court because the show of the court is all about how Spain remains the world's superpower. But the reality is altogether shabbier and more run-down.

Thank you for listening. Subscribe to therestishistoryclub@therestishistory. Com for the entire episode. We'll be back next week, Laura and me, with The Skating Minister by Henry Rayburn. If you want to hear that and the whole series, well, you know what you've got to do.

But what I wanted to say, my niece is fighting the studium. Semester-bedrag, laptop, books, software, mobile, internet. A Master is really expensive.

Tell her, she can get it back.

You mean, you're talking about a tax-subset, right? But she doesn't deserve it.

No, it's not. The magic word 'verlustvortrag'. She just makes it with a VISO-Credit. And when she then works, it means, kaching.

That's possible?

Safe. 'Visosteuer'.

Get your money back.

Now, try it.