VISUAL ARTS distance from the painting indicates the point from where the painter took the view. The picture ostensibly represents the princess Infanta Margarita with her retinue on a casual visit to the studio of the court artist. As we assume the position of the artist indicated by the spot on the floor, the stunningly illusionistic tableau becomes apparitional with every character in the picture related to us in space and scale. The next moment, our bewilderment at the illusionistic visage turns into an uneasy sensation as we spot the painter in the picture (behind a large canvas) looking straight into our eyes. Our discomfort at being forced into the position of the artistes models is relieved only when we discover a faint reflection of the royal couple in a mirror on the distant wall. Evidently, the painter is engaged in painting a large portrait of his exalted patrons. The king and queen are standing .outside the picture (Las Meninas) we are looking at and exactly at the place we are. But that is a lie.3 Viewing through the artist's eye we know that he is in fact painting Las Meninas — the casual visitors who have come to observe him paint the royal couple. This is further complicated by the fact that with the Infanta and the Maids of Honour he is also painting himself and the rest of the scene as reflected in the eyes of the royal couple. Having usurped the place of the royal couple, the scene also belongs to our eyes. The painter implies that while painting his own self in the act of painting Las Meninas and the royal couple, he is simultaneously painting every viewer who faces it. It is, however, revealed in the end that his eye is neither directed toward the king and queen, nor the spectator, but towards himself, Appearing both inside and outside the picture-visibly or subliminally - the painter has compressed his two selves in a rare, molecular moment of time - a feat only the magic of illusionism is capable of performing. A sort of mirror facing mirror which dissolves everything except the artist's ego into insubstantiality The realization becomes unnerving when we find ourselves trapped between mirrors that do not reflect us.4 With such a force of physical inducement in the picture, the space in Las Meninas is felt in measurable quantities of scale and weight despite the evanescent quality of paint. Everything is made to look tangibly voluminous including the blank areas suggesting room for concrete objects. As we stand in front of the canvas we feel blocks of space in the arrangement of figures. The blank floor at the bottom extends between -our feet and that of the dog and the lower edges of the canvas, the dramatis personae glitter at a middle distance, the painter on the left 6 April'June 1983