14
Access provided by Cornell University (16 May 2013 01:17 GMT)

Ancell - Karl Marx

Embed Size (px)

DESCRIPTION

Ancell - Karl Marx

Citation preview

  • Access provided by Cornell University (16 May 2013 01:17 GMT)

  • 156

    maTThew aNcell

    The Theology of Painting: Picturing Philosophy in Velzquezs Las Meninas

    Theory has often been regarded in early modern studies as an irresponsible guest at best, and, at worst, an unwelcome intruder. While early modern cultural production has served theorists well as they explore their own projects, theory is sometimes un-grounded in historical specificity. Though early modern art history has been espe-cially resistant to theory, strong theoretical voices have emerged, including Svetlana Alpers, Mieke Bal, Michael Fried, Hanneke Grootenboer, Maria Loh, Lyle Massey, and Itay Sapir. Not all of them employ theory explicitly, but their approaches in-dicate a strong theoretical subculture in art history that successfully navigates the terrain between history and theory. These critics show that the best theory is his-torically grounded, and can tell us much about how works are inherently theo-retical, philosophical, theological, or theo- philosophical in their historical context. Part of what I hope to demonstrate in this essay is that traditional art history and more theoretical approaches are complementary, despite the obvious antagonism between them. Just as traditional art historical concerns (such as provenance, pa-tronage, and influence) are essential to a responsible theoretical interpretation of an image, theoryeven high or French theory, particularly reviled by tradition-alistscan illuminate aspects (such as philosophical ones, as I will argue here) that traditional methodologies might ignore.

    James Elkins has articulated the divide between art history and aesthetics, con-cluding that art history ultimately does not ask the same questions as aesthetics does, nor does it even see the same issues as questions (48). Similarly, Jorge J. E. Gracia argues that [o]ne of the greatest sources of misunderstanding concerning interpretation is the belief that all interpretations have, or should have, the same aim (158). The problem goes even further than that, since the questions and ap-proaches are often not as purely parsed as the different disciplines maintain. Gracia explains that not only do interpreters rarely only pursue one kind of interpreta-tion but they are often also vague about what their aims are. Some interpretations seek the meaning of an object, which could be conceived variously: significance, reference, intention, ideas, and use. Other interpretations are relational in that their goal is to understand the relation of an object, or its meaning, to something

  • The Theology of Painting 157

    else (165). In the antagonism between art historical and philosophical interpreta-tions, I maintain that we can find some common ground in acknowledging that: (1) both camps engage in relational as well as meaning interpretations; (2) what constitutes a relation or how meaning is defined often differ; and (3) these differ-ences of approach do not invalidate each one or make combination unproductive, but the contrary.

    The question that I wish to address in this essay, then, is how a philosophically- driven, theoretical methodology, such as that employed by Michel Foucault, might attune us to ways in which art enacts philosophy as part of its meaningnot anachronistically, but in a manner consonant with its historical moment in rela-tion to contemporary discourses. As W. J. T. Mitchell argues in his book Picture Theory, there are no purely visual or verbal arts; all media are mixed media (5). Mitchells goal is not to develop a picture theory (much less a theory of pictures), but to picture theory as a practical activity in the formation of representations (6). Mieke Bal proposes that if visual art makes any sense at all beyond the narrow domain of beauty and the affective domain of pleasure, it is because art, too, thinks; it is thought. Not the thought about it, or the thought expressed in it, but visual thought, the thought embodied in form (117). I would like to ask what it might mean to picture philosophy or theology by looking at the case of Diego Velzquez and the reception of his most famous work, Las Meninas (1656).

    Perhaps no more ink needs to be spilt on Las Meninas, but much of what has been written about it in the last thirty- five years dramatizes the issue at hand and provides an interesting case study. If art can picture theory and embody thought, then it certainly can perform the operations of theory, philosophy, and theology. When Luca Giordano famously declared Las Meninas to be the theology of painting, he was not, of course, referring to its theological content; rather, in good Renaissance fashion, Giordano referred to the resemblance of relations, that is, an analogy, between the painting and theology of the sort described by Foucault in The Order of Things (1966).

    As is well- known, Foucault opens The Order of Things with a meticulous (or torturous, as one critic called it) treatment of Las Meninas, followed by a con-sideration of Cervantess Don Quijote (although, interestingly, the first essay was published separately in 1965 and was not originally intended for The Order of Things [Massey 132n]). In the essay on Las Meninas, Foucault argues for a struc-tural paradox that reveals paradoxes in not only what he calls the classical epis-teme (that is, Cartesian rationalism and its derivations), but also in representation itself. This is the case, he argues, because the classical episteme and representa-tion are, as Lyle Massey summarizes (following Gary Gutting), structured to pre-clude the investigation into the nature of representation and how representation

  • 158 The comParaTiST 37 : 2013

    works (Massey 10). For Foucault, such a naturalized view of representation demon-strates the flaws of the Cartesian position by presenting us with three viewpoints: the painters, the objects in view (the king and queen), and the viewers (displaced on the figure of Jos Nieto Velzquez in the back). To complicate matters, Velz-quez is not in a position to paint this painting, nor is he in front of Las Meninas. The king and queen are reflections, arguably, rather than subjects, and though we see ourselves in Jos Nieto (because the vanishing point, which corresponds to the vantage point, hits his elbow), we occupy the space of the king and queen. By dis-placing viewpoints onto each other, Las Meninas fails to sustain a rational, that is classical, distinction between representation and reality . . . a failure inherent in the classical episteme (Massey 12). I would, however, call this failure simply an issue inherent to the Baroque. Golden Age Spain is not Classical France, but this is Fou-caults perspectiveas well as an historical failure on his part.

    Inevitably we come to Jonathan Brown, the magisterial Velzquez scholar whose authority is sufficient to pronounce a disputed Velzquez as authentic, as he did recently regarding a portrait in the Metropolitan Museum (Brown and Gallagher 11). In an essay titled On the Meaning of Las Meninas (1973), Brown criticizes various interpretations of Las Meninas, saying from the outset that every genera-tion has an obligation to accept the challenge of interpretation as part of [the] pro-cess of perpetual revitalization of a great work of art (Images and Ideas 87). That said, Brown does not address Foucault, and his wonderfully argued essay is ulti-mately an attempt to stabilize the meaning of Las Meninas. For him, Las Meninas is Velzquezs successful foray into the fight to both legitimize painting as a liberal art and to secure recognition, favor, and ultimately knighthood from his monar-chical patrons. Velzquez accomplishes this by a slight of hand that allows him to put himself in the implicitthat is, reflectedpresence of the royal couple without violating decorum.

    Now, though Browns argumentation is solid, exquisitely researched, and beyond reasonable dispute, one might wonder if it has to be mutually exclusive of other theoretical or philosophical readings. In a later work, Brown says that:

    Where historians seek to establish boundaries using sources and documents, the philosophical interpreters seek to demolish them by unmasking the con-stantly shifting relationships between object and audience which, for them, lie at the very core of this profoundly suggestive work. At present, these two ap-proaches seem far from being reconciled and perhaps, in the end, it is not very important. (Technique of Genius 186)

    While some might object that those historical boundaries are not stable, his point is clear, and these boundaries still must be taken into account as the context and gen-erative matrix of the work. So, even though Brown gives a little ground to the theo-

  • The Theology of Painting 159

    rists here, his attitude explains why he never mentions Foucault in the earlier essay, which is clearly an attempt at historical reclamation of the meaning of the painting.

    In the wake of Foucaults essay, and apparently disregarding Browns prophy-lactic interpretation, several critics have attempted to solve the riddle of Velzquezs puzzle picture, hijacking the discourse surrounding Las Meninas from art histo-rians. John Searle argued that the viewpoints in Las Meninas are indicative of para-doxes in representation itself. Joel Snyder and Ted Cohen refute Searles assertion that that there is a single canon of classical representation with which this painting is not consistent. Snyder and Cohen go on to prove that the vantage point is at the far open door and that therefore the mirror cannot reflect the king and queen standing before the picture but instead reflects the canvas, so there is no paradox. The perspectival viewpoint makes it impossible for the mirror to reflect the royal couple directly. Consequently, Foucault erred in his initial assumption about the viewers implied position (446). Leo Steinberg counters that the mirror appears to reflect not only the canvas but also the figures standing in front, preserving the ambiguity (52). Ambiguity, in fact, seems to be the point. Even though it is possible to establish the vanishing point by reconstructing the under painting, that is not how we experience a painting. We do not go to a museum or gallery, and get out our protractors, and go to work. It seems that viewers are intended to think the mirror reflects the king and queen. Further examination causes viewers to question their perceptions.

    Some further examples reinforce Velzquezs capacity to picture philosophy in his work. Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (1618), an early work in Velz-quezs career, presents various problems, especially regarding the nature (but not the subject) of the scene in the background with the seated Christ, which has been interpreted as a small framed painting, a mirror reflecting the space, or a window opening into an adjacent room. The first theory would resolve an immediate un-certainty about the women in the framed painting: clearly represented in the back-ground, as the narrative from Luke recounts, is Mary, siting at the Lords feet, and her sister, Martha, who is receiving a light rebuke regarding her priorities after pro-testing that she had been left alone to do all the work of hospitality (Luke 10.3842). Under this first theory, however, the identities of the women in the foreground re-main less clear. Not only does the age difference between the women in the fore-ground preclude them from being the sisters Mary and Martha, the sartorial differ-ences from the figures in Christs space suggest that they are contemporary Spanish women. The painting within the painting, to which the older woman gestures, serves as a reminder to apply the biblical lesson to quotidian experience. Velz-quezs work, in readings in this mode, becomes a moral admonition or bodegn moralis, or general application (Jordan 83).

    Taking the framed background scene as a mirror presents more problems than

  • 160 The comParaTiST 37 : 2013

    it solves. Most obvious is that, due to proper perspective diminution, a mirror would reflect all the items between it and the viewer, including the table in the fore-ground. (It is interesting to note that George Kubler has outlined a similar problem with the mirror in Las Meninas [316]; for Las Meninas, however, practically every critic still assumes it to be a mirror. This does seem to be the intent, since it clearly reflects light while the copies of Rubens on the same wall do not.) Moreover, the older woman is pointing toward the background scene, an act which defies verisi-militude, since both figures would be facing the scene reflected and would not have any reason to refer to the reflection in place of actually pointing to Christ himself.

    The third interpretation of the religious scene as an adjacent room has consider-able support, especially since the 1964 cleaning, which revealed orthogonal lines that deepen the frame in such a way that is almost unmistakably a portal. Infrared analysis reinforces this reading (Brown, Painter and Courtier 17). While these lines are not at all evident from reproductions, after examining the work in person, I support this third interpretation as well. Good art historical methodology has done its job and given us a close approximation to the way the picture appeared in its historical moment. This context is important and helps resolve what still remains a problem even after solidifying the scene as an aperture in the wall: the relationship of the foreground to the background, which Brown admits is still somewhat un-certain, an ambiguity owing to the artists use of space (17). Kitchen and tavern scenes, or bodegones, with a religious subject are found in northern engravings, and Brown indicates that this painting is inspired by Pieter Aertsens Kitchen Scene with Supper at Emmaus, which also subordinates the religious story to the background (16). The difference, he notes, is that the religious scene in the engraving is in the deep background, thus cushioning the shock of seeing the Supper at Emmaus set in a contemporary Flemish kitchen, while Velzquez constructs a close, confining space which partly confounds the attempt to represent the past as present (17). There is, of course, a clear moral allegory here, based on the biblical account and its historical interpretations. The realistic allegories about the superiority of the contemplative life (the best part that Mary has chosen) over more ephemeral acts of service are dramatized here as the viewer is prompted by the old woman, along with the younger woman, to move from the still life and its quotidian and temporal objects on the table to the giver of eternal life in the background.

    Indeed, while I do not doubt any of Browns historical claims, I do find his im-pulse to fix the reading of the painting quite telling. History leaves many inter-pretive fissures. On one hand, the perspective lines do seem to establish the back-ground as space through the wall. On the other hand, the table in the foreground is clearly propped up in such a way as to show us the contents of the still life, but then casts doubt on the reliability of readings dependent on linear perspective, since the painting as a whole does not obey perspectival rules. How can we insist on the

  • The Theology of Painting 161

    legitimacy of the perspectival configuration in part of the spatial field if it is not consistent throughout?

    Since the painting hovers somewhere between the naturalistic and the strictly allegorical, it presents several possibilities that viewers must work through. Velz-quezs contemporaries would certainly have understood the image in light of the northern allegorical woodcuts, and upon close inspection they would probably have concluded that the background is seen through an aperture, but would have asked many of the same questions modern viewers ask before reaching a similar conclusion. Ambiguity is built into the work, as part of a philosophical mode of thinking. Allegory allows us to see the biblical figures as literal, but then the pic-ture becomes non- literal, at least temporally, if not spatially. The audience of this painting was not the uneducated class. Brooke and Cherry note, Throughout Velzquezs career he delighted in the ambiguities of optical illusion, using his great powers of verisimilitude to reinforce an intellectual truth (82). Even if we arrive at a firm conclusion about the allegorical, temporal, and spatial relationships, the very process of working out these issues brings questions about perception and reality to the fore.

    This should not surprise us, as epistemological questions consumed the Spanish imagination in the seventeenth century. Jeremy Robbins has demonstrated that skeptical discourse was not an irregularity in early modern Spain, but rather part and parcel of the dominant culture expressing uncertainty and questioning, ex-ploring, and extending contemporary conceptions of knowledge (10). Episte-mology was not a separate philosophical discipline, but formed part of all intellec-tual inquiry (in sometimes unsystematic ways) and manifested itself in aesthetic production as artists and writers developed strategies to engage Spains severe skep-tical crisis. In confronting the crisis, some of these strategieswhat Robbins terms arts of perception (1)intended to resolve epistemological uncertainty, while others thoroughly explored the problem. Historical accounts of Velzquez, such as Browns, indicate his political savvy and pragmatism. The ambiguously complex nature of key works of his corpus is evidence of a philosophical sophistication as well. While not as formally educated as some of his associates at court, Velzquez was steeped in a culture permeated by epistemological issues, which informed his mode of representation (Velzquezs library gives a sense of not only his technical sophistication, but of his overall erudition. See Ruiz).

    Let us take Velzquezs Venus and Cupid or Rokeby Venus (c. 164448), as another example of engagement with the philosophical preoccupations of seventeenth- century Spain. A rare, but not unique, nude in Golden Age Spain, Venus and Cupid derives from Venetian versions of the theme, such as Titians Venus of Urbino (1538) and Toilet of Venus (c. 1555, attributed to Titian), and combines the mirror motif and the reclining nude, respectively. While the viewer is privy to the chambers of the

  • 162 The comParaTiST 37 : 2013

    goddess of love, her back is turned, partially hiding her nakedness. The goddess of love in back view was common in antiquity, however, and literary sources attest to how this position often increases the desire of the viewer (Prater 5152).

    As with Las Meninas, the mirror in Venus and Cupid complicates the structure of the scene. Unlike Titians Toilet of Venus, Venus doesnt appear to be regarding herself, but rather, the viewer, whose voyeurism she challenges by reciprocating the gaze. The mirror reflects, but also distorts, her face, which complicates the perfec-tion of a beautiful female form without negating it. The mirror also has the potential to reveal her nudity more fully, which, according to a photographic reconstruction by Gavin Ashworth, it is in the proper position to do (Brown, Painter and Courtier 182). Brown argues that Velzquez is arbitrarily altering the image in the mirror by not following basic Euclidean laws of reflection in order to modestly avoid showing her genitalia (182). This point has been disputed, however, by a claim that the re-construction is slightly inaccurate in the angle of the mirror, enough to make such an interpretation obsolete (Prater 24). To me, the obvious pentimenti around the mirror indicate that Velzquez was following the rules of perspective quite loosely, and the argument of the reconstruction is not invalid. Rather, it demonstrates how the construction of the painting deflects the gaze, frustrating the desire to see the truth of the painting, so to speak. Even in the viewers assumed position of truth, the result is a blurry distortion and thwarted desire. The ambiguity and willful vio-lation of perspective do more than preserve decorum in an already morally ques-tionable work; they enact the very problem of knowing in a skeptical age.

    Las Meninas, as we have seen, confounds attempts to stabilize its interpreta-tionevery assertion presents a different problem. If the mirror is, in fact, a mirror, then why does it not reflect as a mirror would? Even the simplest historical expla-nations require us to gloss over some kind of discrepancy. Svetlana Alpers, in agree-ment with Steinberg on this point, argues that there is an inconsistency with the presence of two identifiable and incompatible modes of pictorial representation (41n- 42n). For Alpers, it is

    Velzquezs ambition to embrace two conflicting modes of representation, each of which constitutes the relationship between the viewer and the picturing of the world differently. It is the tension between these twoas between the op-posing poles of two magnets that one might attempt to bring together with ones handsthat informs this picture. (36)

    Alpers further explains that the two central modes of representation in Western art can be seen in two kinds of pictures. In the first type, the Albertian model, exempli-fied by Drers woodcut Draughtsman Drawing a Recumbent Woman and Titians Venus of Urbino, the artist or viewer gazes at the perceived world, reconstructed by the rules of perspective on the surface of the picture. In this mode, the artist

  • The Theology of Painting 163

    takes a commanding attitude toward the world. The position is that of I see the world. In the second type, the northern or descriptive mode, exemplified by Ver-meers View of Delft, the viewer is not looking through a window, but at a surface onto which an image of the world casts itself, like light focused through a lens on the retina. There is no artist to frame the scene; rather, the world produces its own image. The world is simply being seen. For Alpers, these two modes are com-pounded in a dazzling, but fundamentally, unresolvable way in Las Meninas (37). In the Albertian mode, the artist stands with the viewer, physically and epistemo-logically, before the pictured world, while, in the descriptive mode he is accounted for, if at all, within that world (37). If two modes of representation simultaneously obtain in the work, which it self- consciously exploits, then attempts to fix geomet-rically the vanishing point and thus fix the interpretation run counter to the opera-tions of the work itself. Velzquez plays with the conventions of perspective and presents several possibilities of interpretation that challenge the assumption that we can discover and judge the truth of things unequivocally, or settle on a single interpretation in a world of doubles (Gilman 213). This is precisely the problem of the skeptical age. The self has the natural desire to apprehend the world, to render it coherent, and to stabilize itself in relation to its surroundings. Yet, perception in-dicates that there is no fixed point of reference, that the self is enveloped in a world that shifts kaleidoscopically with any change in position. While this predicament would be confusing enough, the early modern self is caught between these two frameworks, or, more accurately, is caught vacillating inside and outside the frame-work of commanding apprehension.

    Perhaps theoretical approaches such as Alperss seem anachronistic. After all, there is no documentary evidence proving that Velzquez is thinking about dif-fering modes of representation. But even Browns argument about patronagewhich, again, I am not disputingdepends on the artist making a sophisticated move in order to include the royal patrons and the artist in the same scene without violating decorum. An artist capable of this kind of conceptual complexity and shrewdness with regard to the inner workings of court politics is astute enough to execute works that picture the epistemological questions of his day. Further-more, as Javier Ports notes, One of the arguments used to prove the liberal na-ture of painting was the wide variety of knowledge required to practice it and the range of disciplines, from history and philosophy to mathematics and anatomy, it covered (289).

    Las Hilanderas or The Fable of Arachne (c. 164448) has received much less at-tention than Las Meninasthis is probably true of all paintingsbut displays some of the same complexity in its treatment of the vexing problem of appearance and reality that consumed early modern Spain. Various ambiguities in the painting pro-nounce themselves to the viewer after even a cursory examination. Iconographic

  • 164 The comParaTiST 37 : 2013

    studies have convincingly supported the mythological theme, with the Pallas and Arachne in the alcove doubled in foreground as the old woman and woman winding the skein, respectively (Lpez- Rey I.163). Complementary allegorical in-terpretations find much support, but what concerns us here is the fluid relationship between the different strata of figures as the scene recedes. The sartorial differences between three groups of women in the picture are clear, but their relationship to one another is not. Is it a mythological scene in a contemporary setting, as was common? Evidence suggests this is the production of a play (Beamud 38). Perhaps most tantalizing is the suggestion that Pallas and Arachne are woven into the tap-estry (which is a citation of Titians Rape of Europa). Lpez- Rey observes that a faint shadow cast by Arachne on the platform (or stage ?) makes that interpretation impossible, but concludes that even so, Velzquez does not make the spatial rela-tions among the tapestry, the figures of Pallas and Arachne, and those of the three ladies very explicit (I.164).

    Moreover, much like Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, literal insistence on perspectival spatial consistency runs into problems when characters are re-peated. If the Arachne casting the shadow is real in the space, then what are we to make of the Arachne in the foreground? Once again, some certainties are dearly bought and present problems of their own. If the figures arent part of the tapestry, we are privy to a drama of some sorta rehearsal perhaps. Peeling away layers of reality, we enter the scene, the curtain is drawn, actors appear, and Titians back-drop transports us to its Ovidian source. Myth blends with the naturalistic details, and we are left to wonder about the ontological status of the space we and the other figures inhabit.

    A final point on The Fable of Arachnethe archway, as depicted, makes no geo-metrical sense. What appears to be a continuation of the right angle covered by the tapestry somehow resolves into a plane parallel to the canvas on the back, which, in turn, subtends more arched lines that cannot be reconciled. This incoherence would reinforce the other perceptual uncertainties in the work, and I would be tempted to make much of this, but quite simply, the brute historical fact is that this portion of the painting is an eighteenth- century addition to the original canvas. This expansion is now absent from the painting as currently displayed in the Prado. Nothing else, however, in the historical treatment discounts the perceptual game Velzquez appears to be playing as he asserts his artistic superiority over his court predecessor Titian.

    Today the antagonism between theoretical and historical approaches does not obtain in the literary sphere to nearly the same extent as it does in art history. To my knowledge, no one has objected to Foucaults reading of Don Quijote in The Order of Thingscertainly there have not been objections by any literary scholars of the same stature as Brown holds in art history. No one questions that literature can be

  • The Theology of Painting 165

    about philosophy, although critics do, of course, disagree about whether a text like Don Quijote is about philosophy, and disagree even more so about whether theory is appropriate and what kinds of theory is appropriate, and so forth. Still, theory teaches the reader to think about the possibilities that texts present. Foucaults ana-lyses of Don Quijote and Las Meninas are support for the same argument about an epistemological break in the seventeenth century. Like Don Quijotes relation-ship to its author and reader, Las Meninas extends its frame outward, involving the viewer and its creator. In both works, the world is being seen. Reading Don Qui-jote with the intent to decide who is right and who is wrong is precisely not the point, nor is working out the geometry in Las Meninas. Neither work is concerned with certainty. Rather, both pose challenges to any form of dogmatism, since being in the world precludes the possibility of certainty.

    Both Velzquezs works and Caldern de la Barcas plays performed at court demonstrate, in their own idiom, a profound skepticism (albeit a fideistic one, in at least Calderns case). The two men were in productive competition at court, and while Velzquez did not have Calderns education, again, I see no reason why he cannot make a philosophically sophisticated argument in painting. I do not mean to suggest that picturing philosophy is merely illustrating written philosophy. As a different medium with a different grammar and vocabulary, painting can be phi-losophy (or theory or theology) uniquely, as Alperss argument suggests to me. The skeptical crisis of Golden Age Spain accounts for the thematic and structural ambi-guity that pervades Velzquezs works.

    It is significant that Foucault follows the Las Meninas chapter (which, as noted, was not his original beginning) with Don Quijote, for the novel raises the skep-tical question of positional knowledge. Both the novel and painting represent and privilege a process of becoming over being. In the Apology for Raymond Sebond, Michel de Montaigne explains: there is no permanent existence either in our being or in that of objects. We ourselves, our faculty of judgment and all mortal things are flowing and rolling ceaselessly: nothing certain can be established about one from the other, since both judged and judging are ever shifting and changing (680). In a state of constant flux, humanity is subject to its own contradictory perceptions and ideas. The process of human being is phenomenal and in a state of becoming as op-posed to the reality or being beyond appearances. Since Being is inaccessible, Mon-taigne states, borrowing from Plutarch, it is the nature of our senses to be misled and deceived. Because they do not know what being is, they take appears to be for is (682). Reason derives its concepts from unreliable sense impressions and bases those concepts on likeness or analogy. Language is still the medium of knowledge, and, indeed, we are able to function because words designate things conventionally.

    Skepticism is not negative, but rather, creative, anti- dogmatic, and interested in the particularity of experience. Montaigne attacks dogmatism and the utility of

  • 166 The comParaTiST 37 : 2013

    analogy, which is, I would argue, the project of Cervantes in Don Quijote and of Velzquez in Las Meninas, both of which celebrate the possibility of perspectives and serve as an aesthetic commentary on the nature of apprehension. Las Meninas is designed to resist stable interpretations and, in its ontological interrogations, suggests phenomenological readings that take into account the embodied viewer, something insisted on by Montaigne, a pre- classical thinker.

    Regarding Las Meninas, Brown concludes:

    Behind this display of pictorial technique is a desire to create a great painting, a veritable masterpiece of art. One measure of Velzquezs success in realizing this ambition is that avalanche of interpretative writing mentioned above. Writers of every stripe and persuasion have hitched their wagon to this star, hoping to bask in its glow and partake of its glory. Everyone wants to get into the pic-ture, to show that they are equal of the genius who created it. So far, however, Las Meninas has managed to surmount even the most brilliant interpretations. (Technique 194)

    I actually think my ambitions here are somewhat less than that. What I find most curious, though, is the force with which Brown asserts Velzquezs genius only to reject some possible, and, in my mind, probable, interpretations that buttress that very assertion.

    The practicality of theory, in this case, seems to me to be that it opens up possi-bilities for interpretation that can be fanciful and unsupportable at times (though, to some extent, this is true of most approaches) but that also attune us to historical possibilities that strictly historical methodologies miss. There is little doubt that a small historical detail can puncture a grandiose theoretical reading, but theory that works responsibly within the historical worldexamining the fine grain of the material world presented to us by fine historians such as Browncan widen that historical purview. While Foucault was factually wrong about the vanishing point, a lynchpin in his argument, his essay spawned a series of interpretations that have pointed to the epistemological problems of the era that The Order of Things elaborates. In fact, most of Foucaults historical claims in all his works have been contested on their finer points, yet I would argue that our understanding of the dis-courses he analyzes is richer because of his theoretical contributions. The polemic over the interpretation of Las Meninas, while a productively intense debate, could be even more productive if the antagonism transformed itself into a more ame-nable dialogue.

    u Brigham Young University

  • The Theology of Painting 167

    workS ciTeD

    Alpers, Svetlana. Interpretation without Representation, or, the Viewing of Las Meninas. Representations 1 (1983): 3142.

    Bal, Mieke. Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary Art, Preposterous History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

    Beamud, Ana M. Las Hilanderas, the Theater, and a Comedia by Caldern. Bulletin of the Comediantes 34, 1 (1982): 3744.

    Brown, Jonathan. Images and Ideas in Seventeenth- Century Spanish Painting. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.

    . Velzquez, Painter and Courtier. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.Brown, Jonathan, and Carmen Garrido. Velzquez: The Technique of Genius. New Haven:

    Yale University Press, 1998.Brown, Jonathan, and Michael Gallagher. Velzquez Rediscovered. New York:

    Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009.Elkins, James, ed. Art History Versus Aesthetics. New York: Routledge, 2006.Gilman, Ernest B. The Curious Perspective: Literary and Pictorial Wit in the Seventeenth

    Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978.Gracia, Jorge J. E. Images of Thought: Philosophical Interpretations of Carlos Estvezs Art.

    SUNY Series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture. Albany: SUNY Press, 2009.

    Jordan, William B., and Sarah Schroth. Spanish Still Life in the Golden Age, 16001650. Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Museum, 1985.

    Kubler, George. The Mirror in Las Meninas. The Art Bulletin 67.2 (1985): 316.Lpez- Rey, Jos. Velzquez: Catalogue Raisonn. 2 vols. Kln: Taschen- Wildenstein

    Institute, 1999.Massey, Lyle. Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies: Anamorphosis in Early Modern Theories

    of Perspective. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007.Mitchell, W. J. T. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago:

    University of Chicago Press, 1994.Montaigne, Michel de. The Complete Essays. Trans. M. A. Screech. London: Penguin, 1991.Prater, Andreas. Venus at Her Mirror: Velzquez and the Art of Nude Painting. Munich:

    Prestel, 2002.Ports Prez, Javier. Connecting Threads: Meninas, Spinners and a Musical Fable.

    Velzquezs Fables: Mythology and Sacred History in the Golden Age. Ed. Javier Ports Prez. Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007. 279303.

    Robbins, Jeremy. Arts of Perception: The Epistemological Mentality of the Spanish Baroque, 15801720. Abingdon, England: Routledge, 2007.

    Ruiz Prez, Pedro. De la pintura y las letras: la biblioteca de Velzquez. Sevilla: Consejera de Cultura de la Junta de Andaluca, 1999.

    Snyder, Joel, and Ted Cohen. Reflexions on Las Meninas: Paradox Lost. Critical Inquiry 7, 2 (1980): 42947.

    Steinberg, Leo. Velzquez Las Meninas. October 19 (1981): 4554.

  • 168 The comParaTiST 37 : 2013

    liNkS To imaGeS

    Draughtsman Drawing a Recumbent Woman:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Albrecht_D%C3%BCrer _- _Draughtsman_Drawing_a_Recumbent_Woman_- _WGA7261.jpg.

    The Fable of Arachne:http://www.wga.hu/art/v/velazque/09/0901vela.jpg.

    Las Meninas:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Las_Meninas%2C _by_Diego_Vel%C3%A1zquez%2C_from_Prado_in_Google_Earth.jpg/521px- Las _Meninas%2C_by_Diego_Vel%C3%A1zquez%2C_from_Prado_in_Google_Earth.jpg.

    Christ in the House of Mary and Martha:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Christ_in_the_house_of _Marthe_and_Marry_V%C3%A9lazquez.jpg.

    Rokeby Venus:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/RokebyVenus.jpg.

    Venus at her Toilet:http://www.wga.hu/art/t/tiziano/09/10mirror.jpg.

    Venus of Urbino:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Tizian_102.jpg.

    View of Delft:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Vermeer- view- of- delft.jpg.