Reflexions on "Las Meninas": Paradox Lost

Velazquez's Las Meninas is paradoxical, according to John Searle.' There has accumulated a staggering literature discussing the mysteries of this painting, and so, presumably, the contribution of Searle's essay is its quasi-technical exposition of the paradoxical character of the painting. Searle's analysis of Las Meninas stands or falls with the truth of his assertion that "in the mirror, exactly opposite us, the spectators, is reflected the image of Philip IV and his second wife Maria Ana" (p. 480). Searle locates the significance of the painting in the rules of its construction, and its paradoxical character originates in its alleged violation of one fundamental rule of "the axiom system of classical illusionist representative painting" (p. 483). The broken rule is the basic "axiom" of perspective geometry that requires the painting to be projected as well as viewed from the viewpoint of the artist. Given this observation, Searle argues: (a) the painting is made not from the point of view of the artist but from