Reviews
This book of Velásquez's painting Las Meninas reads like an extended personal essay. Insights of the painting, which have a more familiar art-history-academician flavour are intertwined with the author's two deeply personal experiences - (1) Jacobs meeting the people who helped transport and conserve the painting during the Civil War, and (2) quietly erudite reflections on his fascination with Las Meninas since his youth, and the following a string of events (read: summation of his life and profession) that came to shape him as an art historian and (as this reader infers from the autobiographic details and recollections) an educated, well-travelled man. Each chapter unpeels the layers to the painting in an approachable fashion, the real figures in the painting are identified, and the discussion even in its most 'technical' (on angles and vanishing points) feels like being privy to a brilliant private conversation (perhaps of self with oneself). The central argument revolves around the painting's plays with reflection and perspective, brilliantly enabling the work to reflect, imply, and so doing, bridge the divide separating painting and viewer. Jacobs suggests the crossing is two-fold: in space, bringing together the people in the painting and the people outside of it (who are hazily reflected in the mirror at the back). And in time, into its 'afterlife', where these historical figures continue to meet the gaze of the modern viewer looking into the frame. The books shows a work redolent with meaning, where every gesture, every figure and allusion has a place and purpose. In that space between this suggestion and the viewer's myriad possible conclusions lies the core of the painting's power. It is interesting to find, where today Foucault is bandied about for credit, Foucault's musings about the painting (less) and theories of perspective (more) sparking off profound and sincere revelations in the author. Since the core motivation for any laboured work of artistic criticism is surely love for its magic. Ed Vulliamy who writes the foreword that succinctly condenses these elements, feels no stranger to this, too.