Las Meninas

This is the first large group composition in the series in which Picasso interpreted Velázquez’s "Las Meninas". He painted it the day after he made a sketch that anticipated some of its main features, such as the size of the figure of the painter or the centrality granted to the palace lodging master José Nieto.
In his endeavour to create his own Meninas, the first comparison the artist seems to consider is the choice of format, which was vertical in Velázquez and horizontal in Picasso’s first version. As regards the characters, all those in the Velázquez ensemble appear in Picasso’s composition, albeit their treatment differs. On the one hand, the central figure is no longer Infanta Margarita but Velázquez himself, whose image has grown to the extent that it almost equals the height of the actual canvas, thus symbolising the importance of the role of the artist; on the other, Velázquez is holding two palettes instead of one. Framed by the open door that becomes one of the main sources of light, José Nieto stands at the point where the lines of perspective and the vertex of the pyramidal structure in which the other characters are inserted converge. Moreover, as the composition is scanned from left to right, the figure is subjected to simplification and becomes two-dimensional and caricatural, to the point that Nicolasito Pertusato is but a silhouette.
This simplification also extends to the treatment of space, which is also different due to the inclusion of large windows that filter the light. While this brightness is another of the substantial variations, we should also mention the contrast afforded by the absence of colour thanks to the use of a chiefly black and white palette. The fact that this series was made in La Californie is essential to understanding Picasso’s interest in experimenting with light and colour. It is well known that the works he made in this studio are characterised by the introduction of large windows that bring in the light and colour of the Mediterranean. Thus, the sixteen works that depict the whole composition reveal how the artist played with these two elements, which, in turn, furthered his experimentation with space and characters, as in subsequent complex compositions divided up into multiple planes and layers, or works in which line disappears and single patches of colour distinguish space and figures.