Las Meninas

The little Infanta Margarita stands at the center, attended by kneeling maids of honor, dwarfs, and a dog, while at the left the painter himself looms before a huge canvas - and in a mirror on the back wall the king and queen appear, standing just where we do. Velazquez turns a royal group portrait into a dizzying meditation on who is looking at whom, on reality and reflection. Now in the Prado, Las Meninas is the supreme achievement of Spanish painting, endlessly analyzed and never exhausted.