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🦋 Las Meninas -- story & painting

My reaction to J. Sáez de Ibarra's "Las Meninas" on the first few readings was one of excitement and confusion. The first section -- "Bocetos/Sketches", which makes up the body of the story -- is gripping and interesting, but has no resolution; the second section, "Las Meninas" is just a page. It appears to be the character Juan Felipe describing the positions of all the members of the household in the photo which was soon to be taken at the end of the first section, and which is reproduced very unclearly on the facing page; under which appears a subtitle listing the figures represented, but by different names. Confusing. The key, as it took me a long time to figure out, is the "photo" -- it is a print of Diego Velázquez' painting "Las Meninas" (1656), a portrait of king Juan Felipe IV's household. The painting is the centerpiece of the story -- "Bocetos" is serving to set up the characters who appear in the painting -- which is for the purposes of the story not a 1656 painting but a photograph of a contemporary celebrity's household. Accepting all this requires some pretty twisted suspension of disbelief -- eg it is kind of difficult to accept the dwarfs Nicolás Pertusso and hydrocephalic Maria Bárbola as Juan Felipe's adolescent son and the prostitute with whom he spent the night -- and adds a new dimension to the story, completes it.

posted evening of Tuesday, August 27th, 2013
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