Menina. Isabel de Velasco. 21 cm.

Description

Decorative figure by the sculptor Angeles Anglada, representing one of the Meninas, Isabel de Velasco, in reconstituted marble (marble powder + binder), finished with polychromes and age patinas.

Measurements:

Width: 16 cm. Depth: 11 cm. Height: 21 cm.

Reproduction of a sculpture recreating one of the Meninas from Velázquez’s painting.  Isabel de Velasco was the daughter of the King’s Gentilhombre de Cámara, Don Bernardino López de Ayala y Velasco, Count of Fuensalida. In the painting she appears to the right of the Infanta, bowing.

Diego Velázquez (1599 – 1660) painted Las Meninas in 1656. This painting is Velázquez’s masterpiece, subject to numerous interpretations of various kinds. The central subject is the Infanta Margarita and her ladies-in-waiting, called Meninas, Isabel de Velasco and María Agustina Sarmiento de Sotomayor, together with the dwarfs Mari Bárbola and Nicolasito Pertusato and a mastiff dog. The painter portrays himself painting a large canvas on the left of the picture. Behind the Meninas is their caretaker, Marcela de Ulloa, dressed as a nun (or widow), conversing with an unidentified figure, a guardadamas. In the background, at the open door of the staircase, is José Nieto Velázquez, the queen’s lodger. A painting or mirror in the background shows Philip IV and Mariana of Austria. If we follow the interpretation of the mirror, Velázquez would have painted a self-portrait of himself while he was painting a portrait of the two monarchs.