Las Meninas_Part 1

As a first step toward the question of the self-representation of the city, we are going to review Michel Foucault's analysis of Las Meninas, the very example of the ontology of representation painted by Diego Velazquez in 1656.

Let us analyse the process of seeing this picture as if it was the first time we see it.

We see a painter close to some people as the main character, and we can see also a mirror and a man in the door's threshold at the bottom of the room where the scene runs. The painter is representing something that we cannot see because the front side of the canvas is not visible, we only can see the reverse of it. This way we do not ever know what or who is he representing.

We focus on the painter and he seems that he could not be seen at the same time on the real picture that represent him and see the inside canvas in which he is representing something. As Foucault points out, he "oscillates on the threshold of these two incompatible visibilities". According to this, Foucault continues saying that "the scene that he sees is two times invisible; because it is not represented in the picture space and because he is just in the blind point, in this essential frame where our gaze removes us in the very moment that we see it". This game between what is visible and what is invisible is the main trick of the picture. And it is this magic moment describes by Foucault that when we realise that we are occupying the space of the object that the painter is representing.

So, without any documentation about the picture, you can argue that he is painting the scene in front of a mirror and therefore that we can not see in the invisible canvas is just the picture itself.
But what is about the mysterious mirror at the bottom of the scene? What does it mean?

to be continued...