The Theology of Painting: Picturing Philosophy in Velázquez’s Las Meninas

Author(s): MATTHEW ANCELL

Source: The Comparatist , Vol. 37 (MAY 2013), pp. 156-168
Published by: University of North Carolina Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26237337

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 Matthew Ancell

The Theology of Painting: Picturing Philosophy

in Velázquez’s Las Meninas


Theory has often been regarded in early modern studies as an irresponsible guest at
best, and, at worst, an unwelcome intruder. While early modern cultural production
has served theorists well as they explore their own projects, theory is sometimes un-
grounded in historical specificity. Though early modern art history has been espe-
cially resistant to theory, strong theoretical voices have emerged, including Svetlana
Alpers, Mieke Bal, Michael Fried, Hanneke Grootenboer, Maria Loh, Lyle Massey,
and Itay Sapir. Not all of them employ theory explicitly, but their approaches in-
dicate a strong theoretical subculture in art history that successfully navigates the
terrain between history and theory. These critics show that the best theory is his-
torically grounded, and can tell us much about how works are inherently theo-
retical, philosophical, theological, or theo-­philosophical in their historical context.
Part of what I hope to demonstrate in this essay is that traditional art history and
more theoretical approaches are complementary, despite the obvious antagonism
between them. Just as traditional art historical concerns (such as provenance, pa-
tronage, and influence) are essential to a responsible theoretical interpretation of
an image, theory—even “high” or French theory, particularly reviled by tradition-
alists—can illuminate aspects (such as philosophical ones, as I will argue here) that
traditional methodologies might ignore.
James Elkins has articulated the divide between art history and aesthetics, con-
cluding that art history ultimately does not ask the same questions as aesthetics
does, nor does it even see the same issues as questions (48). Similarly, Jorge J. E.
Gracia argues that “[o]ne of the greatest sources of misunderstanding concerning
interpretation is the belief that all interpretations have, or should have, the same
aim” (158). The problem goes even further than that, since the questions and ap-
proaches are often not as purely parsed as the different disciplines maintain. Gracia
explains that not only do interpreters rarely only pursue one kind of interpreta-
tion but they are often also vague about what their aims are. Some interpretations
seek the “meaning” of an object, which could be conceived variously: significance,
reference, intention, ideas, and use. Other interpretations are “relational” in that
their goal is to understand the relation of an object, or its meaning, to something

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else (165). In the antagonism between art historical and philosophical interpreta-
tions, I maintain that we can find some common ground in acknowledging that:
(1) both camps engage in relational as well as meaning interpretations; (2) what
constitutes a relation or how meaning is defined often differ; and (3) these differ-
ences of approach do not invalidate each one or make combination unproductive,
but the contrary.
The question that I wish to address in this essay, then, is how a philosophically-­
driven, theoretical methodology, such as that employed by Michel Foucault, might
attune us to ways in which art enacts philosophy as part of its meaning—not
anachronistically, but in a manner consonant with its historical moment in rela-
tion to contemporary discourses. As W. J. T. Mitchell argues in his book Picture
Theory, “there are no ‘purely’ visual or verbal arts”; “all media are ‘mixed media’” (5).
Mitchell’s goal is not to develop a “‘picture theory’ (much less a theory of pictures),
but to picture theory as a practical activity in the formation of representations” (6).
Mieke Bal proposes that if “visual art makes any sense at all beyond the narrow
domain of beauty and the affective domain of pleasure, it is because art, too, thinks;
it is thought. Not the thought about it, or the thought expressed in it, but visual
thought, the thought embodied in form” (117). I would like to ask what it might
mean to picture philosophy or theology by looking at the case of Diego Velázquez
and the reception of his most famous work, Las Meninas (1656).
Perhaps no more ink needs to be spilt on Las Meninas, but much of what has
been written about it in the last thirty-­five years dramatizes the issue at hand and
provides an interesting case study. If art can picture theory and embody thought,
then it certainly can perform the operations of theory, philosophy, and theology.
When Luca Giordano famously declared Las Meninas to be “the theology of
painting,” he was not, of course, referring to its theological content; rather, in good
Renaissance fashion, Giordano referred to the resemblance of relations, that is, an
analogy, between the painting and theology of the sort described by Foucault in
The Order of Things (1966).
As is well-­known, Foucault opens The Order of Things with a meticulous (or
“torturous,” as one critic called it) treatment of Las Meninas, followed by a con-
sideration of Cervantes’s Don Quijote (although, interestingly, the first essay was
published separately in 1965 and was not originally intended for The Order of
Things [Massey 132n]). In the essay on Las Meninas, Foucault argues for a struc-
tural paradox that reveals paradoxes in not only what he calls the “classical epis-
teme” (that is, Cartesian rationalism and its derivations), but also in representation
itself. This is the case, he argues, because the classical episteme and representa-
tion are, as Lyle Massey summarizes (following Gary Gutting), “structured to pre-
clude the investigation into the nature of representation” and how representation

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works (Massey 10). For Foucault, such a naturalized view of representation demon-
strates the flaws of the Cartesian position by presenting us with three viewpoints:
the painter’s, the objects’ in view (the king and queen), and the viewer’s (displaced
on the figure of José Nieto Velázquez in the back). To complicate matters, Veláz-
quez is not in a position to paint this painting, nor is he in front of Las Meninas.
The king and queen are reflections, arguably, rather than subjects, and though we
see ourselves in José Nieto (because the vanishing point, which corresponds to the
vantage point, hits his elbow), we occupy the space of the king and queen. By dis-
placing viewpoints onto each other, Las Meninas “fails to sustain a rational, that is
classical, distinction between representation and reality . . . a failure inherent in the
classical episteme” (Massey 12). I would, however, call this “failure” simply an issue
inherent to the Baroque. Golden Age Spain is not Classical France, but this is Fou-
cault’s perspective—as well as an historical failure on his part.
Inevitably we come to Jonathan Brown, the magisterial Velázquez scholar whose
authority is sufficient to pronounce a disputed Velázquez as authentic, as he did
recently regarding a portrait in the Metropolitan Museum (Brown and Gallagher
11). In an essay titled “On the Meaning of Las Meninas” (1973), Brown criticizes
various interpretations of Las Meninas, saying from the outset that “every genera-
tion has an obligation to accept the challenge of interpretation as part of [the] pro-
cess of perpetual revitalization” of a great work of art (Images and Ideas 87). That
said, Brown does not address Foucault, and his wonderfully argued essay is ulti-
mately an attempt to stabilize the meaning of Las Meninas. For him, Las Meninas
is Velázquez’s successful foray into the fight to both legitimize painting as a liberal
art and to secure recognition, favor, and ultimately knighthood from his monar-
chical patrons. Velázquez accomplishes this by a slight of hand that allows him to
put himself in the implicit—that is, reflected—presence of the royal couple without
violating decorum.
Now, though Brown’s argumentation is solid, exquisitely researched, and beyond
reasonable dispute, one might wonder if it has to be mutually exclusive of other
theoretical or philosophical readings. In a later work, Brown says that:

Where historians seek to establish boundaries using sources and documents,

the philosophical interpreters seek to demolish them by unmasking the con-
stantly shifting relationships between object and audience which, for them, lie
at the very core of this profoundly suggestive work. At present, these two ap-
proaches seem far from being reconciled and perhaps, in the end, it is not very
important. (Technique of Genius 186)

While some might object that those historical boundaries are not stable, his point is
clear, and these boundaries still must be taken into account as the context and gen-
erative matrix of the work. So, even though Brown gives a little ground to the theo-

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rists here, his attitude explains why he never mentions Foucault in the earlier essay,
which is clearly an attempt at historical reclamation of the meaning of the painting.
In the wake of Foucault’s essay, and apparently disregarding Brown’s prophy-
lactic interpretation, several critics have attempted to solve the riddle of Velázquez’s
“puzzle picture,” hijacking the discourse surrounding Las Meninas from art histo-
rians. John Searle argued that the viewpoints in Las Meninas are indicative of para-
doxes in representation itself. Joel Snyder and Ted Cohen refute Searle’s assertion
that that there is a single canon of classical representation with which this painting
is not consistent. Snyder and Cohen go on to prove that the vantage point is at
the far open door and that therefore the mirror cannot reflect the king and queen
standing before the picture but instead reflects the canvas, so there is no paradox.
The perspectival viewpoint makes it impossible for the mirror to reflect the royal
couple directly. Consequently, Foucault erred in his initial assumption about the
viewer’s implied position (446). Leo Steinberg counters that the mirror appears
to reflect not only the canvas but also the figures standing in front, preserving the
ambiguity (52). Ambiguity, in fact, seems to be the point. Even though it is possible
to establish the vanishing point by reconstructing the under painting, that is not
how we experience a painting. We do not go to a museum or gallery, and get out our
protractors, and go to work. It seems that viewers are intended to think the mirror
reflects the king and queen. Further examination causes viewers to question their
perceptions.
Some further examples reinforce Velázquez’s capacity to picture philosophy in
his work. Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (1618), an early work in Veláz-
quez’s career, presents various problems, especially regarding the nature (but not
the subject) of the scene in the background with the seated Christ, which has been
interpreted as a small framed painting, a mirror reflecting the space, or a window
opening into an adjacent room. The first theory would resolve an immediate un-
certainty about the women in the framed painting: clearly represented in the back-
ground, as the narrative from Luke recounts, is Mary, siting at the Lord’s feet, and
her sister, Martha, who is receiving a light rebuke regarding her priorities after pro-
testing that she had been left alone to do all the work of hospitality (Luke 10.38–42).
Under this first theory, however, the identities of the women in the foreground re-
main less clear. Not only does the age difference between the women in the fore-
ground preclude them from being the sisters Mary and Martha, the sartorial differ-
ences from the figures in Christ’s space suggest that they are contemporary Spanish
women. The painting within the painting, to which the older woman gestures,
serves as a reminder to apply the biblical lesson to quotidian experience. Veláz-
quez’s work, in readings in this mode, becomes “a moral admonition” or “bodegón
moralisé, or general application” (Jordan 83).
Taking the framed background scene as a mirror presents more problems than

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it solves. Most obvious is that, due to proper perspective diminution, a mirror
would reflect all the items between it and the viewer, including the table in the fore-
ground. (It is interesting to note that George Kubler has outlined a similar problem
with the mirror in Las Meninas [316]; for Las Meninas, however, practically every
critic still assumes it to be a mirror. This does seem to be the intent, since it clearly
reflects light while the copies of Rubens on the same wall do not.) Moreover, the
older woman is pointing toward the background scene, an act which defies verisi-
militude, since both figures would be facing the scene reflected and would not have
any reason to refer to the reflection in place of actually pointing to Christ himself.
The third interpretation of the religious scene as an adjacent room has consider-
able support, especially since the 1964 cleaning, which revealed orthogonal lines
that deepen the frame in such a way that is almost unmistakably a portal. Infrared
analysis reinforces this reading (Brown, Painter and Courtier 17). While these lines
are not at all evident from reproductions, after examining the work in person, I
support this third interpretation as well. Good art historical methodology has done
its job and given us a close approximation to the way the picture appeared in its
historical moment. This context is important and helps resolve what still remains a
problem even after solidifying the scene as an aperture in the wall: the relationship
of the foreground to the background, which Brown admits “is still somewhat un-
certain,” an “ambiguity” owing to the artist’s use of space (17). Kitchen and tavern
scenes, or bodegones, with a religious subject are found in northern engravings, and
Brown indicates that this painting is inspired by Pieter Aertsen’s Kitchen Scene with
Supper at Emmaus, which also subordinates the religious story to the background
(16). The difference, he notes, is that the religious scene in the engraving is in the
deep background, “thus cushioning the shock of seeing the Supper at Emmaus set
in a contemporary Flemish kitchen,” while Velázquez “constructs a close, confining
space which partly confounds the attempt to represent the past as present” (17).
There is, of course, a clear moral allegory here, based on the biblical account and
its historical interpretations. The “realistic allegories” about the superiority of the
contemplative life (the “best part” that Mary has chosen) over more ephemeral acts
of service are dramatized here as the viewer is prompted by the old woman, along
with the younger woman, to move from the still life and its quotidian and temporal
objects on the table to the giver of eternal life in the background.
Indeed, while I do not doubt any of Brown’s historical claims, I do find his im-
pulse to fix the reading of the painting quite telling. History leaves many inter-
pretive fissures. On one hand, the perspective lines do seem to establish the back-
ground as space through the wall. On the other hand, the table in the foreground is
clearly propped up in such a way as to show us the contents of the still life, but then
casts doubt on the reliability of readings dependent on linear perspective, since
the painting as a whole does not obey perspectival rules. How can we insist on the

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legitimacy of the perspectival configuration in part of the spatial field if it is not
consistent throughout?
Since the painting hovers somewhere between the naturalistic and the strictly
allegorical, it presents several possibilities that viewers must work through. Veláz-
quez’s contemporaries would certainly have understood the image in light of the
northern allegorical woodcuts, and upon close inspection they would probably
have concluded that the background is seen through an aperture, but would have
asked many of the same questions modern viewers ask before reaching a similar
conclusion. Ambiguity is built into the work, as part of a philosophical mode of
thinking. Allegory allows us to see the biblical figures as literal, but then the pic-
ture becomes non-­literal, at least temporally, if not spatially. The audience of this
painting was not the uneducated class. Brooke and Cherry note, “Throughout
Velázquez’s career he delighted in the ambiguities of optical illusion, using his great
powers of verisimilitude to reinforce an intellectual truth” (82). Even if we arrive at
a firm conclusion about the allegorical, temporal, and spatial relationships, the very
process of working out these issues brings questions about perception and reality
to the fore.
This should not surprise us, as epistemological questions consumed the Spanish
imagination in the seventeenth century. Jeremy Robbins has demonstrated that
skeptical discourse was not an irregularity in early modern Spain, but rather “part
and parcel of the ‘dominant’ culture expressing uncertainty and questioning, ex-
ploring, and extending contemporary conceptions of knowledge” (10). Episte-
mology was not a separate philosophical discipline, but formed part of all intellec-
tual inquiry (in sometimes unsystematic ways) and manifested itself in aesthetic
production as artists and writers developed strategies to engage Spain’s severe skep-
tical crisis. In confronting the crisis, some of these strategies—what Robbins terms
“arts of perception” (1)—intended to resolve epistemological uncertainty, while
others thoroughly explored the problem. Historical accounts of Velázquez, such
as Brown’s, indicate his political savvy and pragmatism. The ambiguously complex
nature of key works of his corpus is evidence of a philosophical sophistication as
well. While not as formally educated as some of his associates at court, Velázquez
was steeped in a culture permeated by epistemological issues, which informed his
mode of representation (Velázquez’s library gives a sense of not only his technical
sophistication, but of his overall erudition. See Ruiz).
Let us take Velázquez’s Venus and Cupid or Rokeby Venus (c. 1644–48), as another
example of engagement with the philosophical preoccupations of seventeenth-­
century Spain. A rare, but not unique, nude in Golden Age Spain, Venus and Cupid
derives from Venetian versions of the theme, such as Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538)
and Toilet of Venus (c. 1555, attributed to Titian), and combines the mirror motif and
the reclining nude, respectively. While the viewer is privy to the chambers of the

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goddess of love, her back is turned, partially hiding her nakedness. The goddess of
love in back view was common in antiquity, however, and literary sources attest to
how this position often increases the desire of the viewer (Prater 51–52).
As with Las Meninas, the mirror in Venus and Cupid complicates the structure
of the scene. Unlike Titian’s Toilet of Venus, Venus doesn’t appear to be regarding
herself, but rather, the viewer, whose voyeurism she challenges by reciprocating the
gaze. The mirror reflects, but also distorts, her face, which complicates the perfec-
tion of a beautiful female form without negating it. The mirror also has the potential
to reveal her nudity more fully, which, according to a photographic reconstruction
by Gavin Ashworth, it is in the proper position to do (Brown, Painter and Courtier
182). Brown argues that Velázquez is “arbitrarily altering” the image in the mirror by
not following basic Euclidean laws of reflection in order to modestly avoid showing
her genitalia (182). This point has been disputed, however, by a claim that the re-
construction is slightly inaccurate in the angle of the mirror, enough to make such
an interpretation “obsolete” (Prater 24). To me, the obvious pentimenti around the
mirror indicate that Velázquez was following the rules of perspective quite loosely,
and the argument of the reconstruction is not invalid. Rather, it demonstrates how
the construction of the painting deflects the gaze, frustrating the desire to see the
‘truth’ of the painting, so to speak. Even in the viewer’s assumed position of truth,
the result is a blurry distortion and thwarted desire. The ambiguity and willful vio-
lation of perspective do more than preserve decorum in an already morally ques-
tionable work; they enact the very problem of knowing in a skeptical age.
Las Meninas, as we have seen, confounds attempts to stabilize its interpreta-
tion—every assertion presents a different problem. If the mirror is, in fact, a mirror,
then why does it not reflect as a mirror would? Even the simplest historical expla-
nations require us to gloss over some kind of discrepancy. Svetlana Alpers, in agree-
ment with Steinberg on this point, argues that there is an “inconsistency with the
presence of two identifiable and incompatible modes of pictorial representation”
(41n-­42n). For Alpers, it is

Velázquez’s ambition to embrace two conflicting modes of representation, each

of which constitutes the relationship between the viewer and the picturing of
the world differently. It is the tension between these two—as between the op-
posing poles of two magnets that one might attempt to bring together with one’s
hands—that informs this picture. (36)

Alpers further explains that the two central modes of representation in Western art
can be seen in two kinds of pictures. In the first type, the Albertian model, exempli-
fied by Dürer’s woodcut Draughtsman Drawing a Recumbent Woman and Titian’s
Venus of Urbino, the artist or viewer gazes at the perceived world, reconstructed
by the rules of perspective on the surface of the picture. In this mode, the artist

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takes “a commanding attitude toward the world.” The position is that of “I see the
world.” In the second type, “the northern or descriptive mode,” exemplified by Ver-
meer’s View of Delft, the viewer is not looking through a window, but at a surface
onto which an image of the world casts itself, like light focused through a lens on
the retina. There is no artist to frame the scene; rather, the world produces its own
image. The world is simply “being seen.” For Alpers, these two modes are “com-
pounded in a dazzling, but fundamentally, unresolvable way” in Las Meninas (37).
In the Albertian mode, the artist stands with the viewer, physically and epistemo-
logically, before the pictured world, while, “in the descriptive mode he is accounted
for, if at all, within that world” (37). If two modes of representation simultaneously
obtain in the work, which it self-­consciously exploits, then attempts to fix geomet-
rically the vanishing point and thus fix the interpretation run counter to the opera-
tions of the work itself. Velázquez plays with the conventions of perspective and
presents several possibilities of interpretation that challenge the assumption “that
we can discover and judge the truth of things unequivocally, or settle on a single
interpretation in a world of doubles” (Gilman 213). This is precisely the problem of
the skeptical age. The self has the natural desire to apprehend the world, to render
it coherent, and to stabilize itself in relation to its surroundings. Yet, perception in-
dicates that there is no fixed point of reference, that the self is enveloped in a world
that shifts kaleidoscopically with any change in position. While this predicament
would be confusing enough, the early modern self is caught between these two
frameworks, or, more accurately, is caught vacillating inside and outside the frame-
work of commanding apprehension.
Perhaps theoretical approaches such as Alpers’s seem anachronistic. After all,
there is no documentary evidence proving that Velázquez is thinking about dif-
fering modes of representation. But even Brown’s argument about patronage—
which, again, I am not disputing—depends on the artist making a sophisticated
move in order to include the royal patrons and the artist in the same scene without
violating decorum. An artist capable of this kind of conceptual complexity and
shrewdness with regard to the inner workings of court politics is astute enough
to execute works that picture the epistemological questions of his day. Further-
more, as Javier Portús notes, “One of the arguments used to prove the liberal na-
ture of painting was the wide variety of knowledge required to practice it and the
range of disciplines, from history and philosophy to mathematics and anatomy, it
covered” (289).
Las Hilanderas or The Fable of Arachne (c. 1644–48) has received much less at-
tention than Las Meninas—this is probably true of all paintings—but displays some
of the same complexity in its treatment of the vexing problem of appearance and
reality that consumed early modern Spain. Various ambiguities in the painting pro-
nounce themselves to the viewer after even a cursory examination. Iconographic

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studies have convincingly supported the mythological theme, with the Pallas
and Arachne in the alcove doubled in foreground as the old woman and woman
winding the skein, respectively (López-­Rey I.163). Complementary allegorical in-
terpretations find much support, but what concerns us here is the fluid relationship
between the different strata of figures as the scene recedes. The sartorial differences
between three groups of women in the picture are clear, but their relationship to
one another is not. Is it a mythological scene in a contemporary setting, as was
common? Evidence suggests this is the production of a play (Beamud 38). Perhaps
most tantalizing is the suggestion that Pallas and Arachne are woven into the tap-
estry (which is a citation of Titian’s Rape of Europa). López-­Rey observes that a
faint shadow cast by Arachne on the platform (or stage ?) makes that interpretation
impossible, but concludes that even so, “Velázquez does not make the spatial rela-
tions among the tapestry, the figures of Pallas and Arachne, and those of the three
ladies very explicit” (I.164).
Moreover, much like Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, literal insistence
on perspectival spatial consistency runs into problems when characters are re-
peated. If the Arachne casting the shadow is “real” in the space, then what are we
to make of the Arachne in the foreground? Once again, some certainties are dearly
bought and present problems of their own. If the figures aren’t part of the tapestry,
we are privy to a drama of some sort—a rehearsal perhaps. Peeling away layers of
reality, we enter the scene, the curtain is drawn, actors appear, and Titian’s back-
drop transports us to its Ovidian source. Myth blends with the naturalistic details,
and we are left to wonder about the ontological status of the space we and the other
figures inhabit.
A final point on The Fable of Arachne—the archway, as depicted, makes no geo-
metrical sense. What appears to be a continuation of the right angle covered by the
tapestry somehow resolves into a plane parallel to the canvas on the back, which,
in turn, subtends more arched lines that cannot be reconciled. This incoherence
would reinforce the other perceptual uncertainties in the work, and I would be
tempted to make much of this, but quite simply, the brute historical fact is that this
portion of the painting is an eighteenth-­century addition to the original canvas.
This expansion is now absent from the painting as currently displayed in the Prado.
Nothing else, however, in the historical treatment discounts the perceptual game
Velázquez appears to be playing as he asserts his artistic superiority over his court
predecessor Titian.
Today the antagonism between theoretical and historical approaches does not
obtain in the literary sphere to nearly the same extent as it does in art history. To my
knowledge, no one has objected to Foucault’s reading of Don Quijote in The Order
of Things—certainly there have not been objections by any literary scholars of the
same stature as Brown holds in art history. No one questions that literature can be

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about philosophy, although critics do, of course, disagree about whether a text like
Don Quijote is about philosophy, and disagree even more so about whether theory
is appropriate and what kinds of theory is appropriate, and so forth. Still, theory
teaches the reader to think about the possibilities that texts present. Foucault’s ana-
lyses of Don Quijote and Las Meninas are support for the same argument about
an epistemological break in the seventeenth century. Like Don Quijote’s relation-
ship to its author and reader, Las Meninas extends its frame outward, involving the
viewer and its creator. In both works, the world is “being seen.” Reading Don Qui-
jote with the intent to decide who is right and who is wrong is precisely not the
point, nor is working out the geometry in Las Meninas. Neither work is concerned
with certainty. Rather, both pose challenges to any form of dogmatism, since being
“in the world” precludes the possibility of certainty.
Both Velázquez’s works and Calderón de la Barca’s plays performed at court
demonstrate, in their own idiom, a profound skepticism (albeit a fideistic one, in at
least Calderón’s case). The two men were in productive competition at court, and
while Velázquez did not have Calderón’s education, again, I see no reason why he
cannot make a philosophically sophisticated argument in painting. I do not mean
to suggest that picturing philosophy is merely illustrating written philosophy. As a
different medium with a different grammar and vocabulary, painting can be phi-
losophy (or theory or theology) uniquely, as Alpers’s argument suggests to me. The
skeptical crisis of Golden Age Spain accounts for the thematic and structural ambi-
guity that pervades Velázquez’s works.
It is significant that Foucault follows the Las Meninas chapter (which, as noted,
was not his original beginning) with Don Quijote, for the novel raises the skep-
tical question of positional knowledge. Both the novel and painting represent and
privilege a process of becoming over being. In the “Apology for Raymond Sebond,”
Michel de Montaigne explains: “there is no permanent existence either in our being
or in that of objects. We ourselves, our faculty of judgment and all mortal things are
flowing and rolling ceaselessly: nothing certain can be established about one from
the other, since both judged and judging are ever shifting and changing” (680). In a
state of constant flux, humanity is subject to its own contradictory perceptions and
ideas. The process of human being is phenomenal and in a state of becoming as op-
posed to the reality or being beyond appearances. Since Being is inaccessible, Mon-
taigne states, borrowing from Plutarch, “it is the nature of our senses to be misled
and deceived. Because they do not know what being is, they take appears to be for
is” (682). Reason derives its concepts from unreliable sense impressions and bases
those concepts on likeness or analogy. Language is still the medium of knowledge,
and, indeed, we are able to function because words designate things conventionally.
Skepticism is not negative, but rather, creative, anti-­dogmatic, and interested
in the particularity of experience. Montaigne attacks dogmatism and the utility of

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analogy, which is, I would argue, the project of Cervantes in Don Quijote and of
Velázquez in Las Meninas, both of which celebrate the possibility of perspectives
and serve as an aesthetic commentary on the nature of apprehension. Las Meninas
is designed to resist stable interpretations and, in its ontological interrogations,
suggests phenomenological readings that take into account the embodied viewer,
something insisted on by Montaigne, a pre-­classical thinker.
Regarding Las Meninas, Brown concludes:

Behind this display of pictorial technique is a desire to create a great painting, a

veritable masterpiece of art. One measure of Velázquez’s success in realizing this
ambition is that avalanche of interpretative writing mentioned above. Writers
of every stripe and persuasion have hitched their wagon to this star, hoping
to bask in its glow and partake of its glory. Everyone wants to get into the pic-
ture, to show that they are equal of the genius who created it. So far, however,
Las Meninas has managed to surmount even the most brilliant interpretations.
(Technique 194)

I actually think my ambitions here are somewhat less than that. What I find most
curious, though, is the force with which Brown asserts Velázquez’s genius only to
reject some possible, and, in my mind, probable, interpretations that buttress that
very assertion.
The practicality of theory, in this case, seems to me to be that it opens up possi-
bilities for interpretation that can be fanciful and unsupportable at times (though,
to some extent, this is true of most approaches) but that also attune us to historical
possibilities that strictly historical methodologies miss. There is little doubt that
a small historical detail can puncture a grandiose theoretical reading, but theory
that works responsibly within the historical world—examining the fine grain of
the material world presented to us by fine historians such as Brown—can widen
that historical purview. While Foucault was factually wrong about the vanishing
point, a lynchpin in his argument, his essay spawned a series of interpretations that
have pointed to the epistemological problems of the era that The Order of Things
elaborates. In fact, most of Foucault’s historical claims in all his works have been
contested on their finer points, yet I would argue that our understanding of the dis-
courses he analyzes is richer because of his theoretical contributions. The polemic
over the interpretation of Las Meninas, while a productively intense debate, could
be even more productive if the antagonism transformed itself into a more ame-
nable dialogue.

u Brigham Young University

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 Works Cited
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 Links to Images
Draughtsman Drawing a Recumbent Woman:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Albrecht_D%C3%BCrer
_-­_Draughtsman_Drawing_a_Recumbent_Woman_-­_WGA7261.jpg.
The Fable of Arachne:
http://www.wga.hu/art/v/velazque/09/0901vela.jpg.
Las Meninas:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Las_Meninas%2C
_by_Diego_Vel%C3%A1zquez%2C_from_Prado_in_Google_Earth.jpg/521px-­Las
_Meninas%2C_by_Diego_Vel%C3%A1zquez%2C_from_Prado_in_Google_Earth.jpg.
Christ in the House of Mary and Martha:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Christ_in_the_house_of
_Marthe_and_Marry_V%C3%A9lazquez.jpg.
Rokeby Venus:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/RokebyVenus.jpg.
Venus at her Toilet:
http://www.wga.hu/art/t/tiziano/09/10mirror.jpg.
Venus of Urbino:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Tizian_102.jpg.
View of Delft:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Vermeer-­view-­of-­delft.jpg.

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