This is one of many Picasso paintings of the 1950s which rework classics from the past in a drastically dissimilar modern idiom. Las Meninas ('The Maids'), by the 17th-century Spanish artist Diego Velazquez, shows the Spanish Infanta (eldest daughter of the King), still a child, with her maids of honour, looking at an artist at work in front of his easel.
The picture is seen from the point of view of the royal couple whom Velazquez is painting, themselves visible only in a mirror behind him.
For all the differences between Velazquez and Picasso, all the elements in the original can still be identified in the brilliantly schematized jewel-like 20th-century picture, perhaps the finest of the Las Meninas series - no less than 44 works - which he painted in the space of a few months.
