Diego Velázquez (1599–1660) was court painter to Philip IV; with more than thirty years' service at the palace, he was at the height of both office and status four years before his death. *Las Meninas* (Spanish for 'the ladies-in-waiting') takes place in the studio assigned to him within the Alcázar Palace.

The composition includes nine figures. At the centre is the five-year-old Infanta Margarita Teresa, two ladies-in-waiting, a dwarf and an infant, court officials at the back right, and on the left Velázquez himself, palette in hand at his easel. In a mirror on the back wall appear Philip IV and Queen Mariana — meaning that we, as viewers, stand in the king's position; the figure Velázquez is studying is us. The painting's most debated mystery is right there: what is Velázquez actually painting — a portrait of the royal couple, or this scene itself? The back of the canvas is hidden from us; we cannot know.

The work also shows Velázquez wearing the cross of the Order of Santiago on his chest. He received the title years after finishing the painting; the cross was added by his own hand, or another's, almost certainly in the year of his death. That detail discloses another stratum: a painter, conventionally classed as a craftsman, claiming aristocratic status.

The Alcázar burned in 1734; the painting was barely rescued and the right side was somewhat trimmed. It now hangs at the centre of the Prado in Madrid. In 1957 Picasso reworked the composition through fifty-eight variations; Foucault opened *The Order of Things* with an analysis of it. *Las Meninas* is treated less as a painting in art history than as a problem in the philosophy of representation.