Set of Polycromed Meninas. 30 cm

Description

Reproduction of three figures representing three Meninas in reconstituted marble (marble powder + binder), hand-polychromed in oil.

Measurements:

• Isabel de Velasco (green Menina):
  Height: 29 cm. Width: 24 cm. Depth: 10.5 cm.
  Weight: 3 kg.
• Infanta Margarita (light blue Menina):
  Height: 27 cm. Width: 17 cm. Depth: 9 cm.
  Weight: 5 kg.
• María Agustina Sarmiento de Sotomayor. (Red Menina):
  Height: 30 cm. Width: 22 cm. Depth: 11 cm.
  Weight: 5 kg.

In these figures we recreate three characters from Velázquez’s famous painting. The figures have been hand painted with oil technique by our craftsmen.

The characters represented are:

The Infanta Margarita, (statue painted in a light blue dress): daughter of King Philip IV and Mariana of Austria. In the painting she appears surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, called Meninas.

Isabel de Velasco (statue painted in green dress): 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.

María Agustina Sarmiento de Sotomayor, (statue painted in red dress): daughter of the Count of Salvatierra. In the painting she is the figure to the left of the Infanta, reclining before her and offering her a vase.

Diego Velázquez painted Las Meninas in 1656. This painting is Velázquez’s masterpiece, subject to numerous interpretations of various kinds. The central theme is the Infanta Margarita and her Meninas, the two already mentioned, 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 painting. Behind the Meninas is the sitter of the Meninas, 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 aposentador. 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 himself while making a portrait of the two monarchs.