Created in 1656 by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, ‘Las meninas’ is one of the greatest European paintings of all times, and by far one of the most analyzed, theorized, and adapted works of art in Modern history. Like many Spanish Baroque artifacts, ‘Las Meninas’ resembles a puzzle that calls for more than one strategy to assemble its pieces together. In this course students will approach El Prado Museum’s most visited work using various strategies vis-à-vis literary classics from Baroque Spain and 20th/21st century scholarship on the Empire and Power, Domesticity, Gender and Sexuality, Court Life, Material Culture and Baroque art. We will also study textual and visual adaptations that rework some of Velázquez’s obsessions. Our goal is to study political, cultural and practical contexts that shed light onto Velázquez’s time and our own ways of interpreting it.
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