I think I finally understand why Las Meninas is referred to as the “philosophy of art”, while earlier this morning, as I grabbed my coffee and wondered if it was safe to drink it as I sped down the highway, a small dog skipped into my lane. And what now? I swerved around the dog (I hope it lived, but don’t expect it survived the cars behind me), but I still don’t know what to do with Las Meninas.

Do I post it here as some self-congratulatory exercise? Do I find ways to inject it into casual conversation? Do I stop every single person I see and ask if they know why it is beautiful, or is that to condescend? Who wants to know in the first place, and is this even shared—even possible to share—or is it for everyone to experience alone?

I think that, like the subject of the painting Velazquez is working on at left, I will never know. I may have a sense of the scale of the painting he is working on, a painting approximately the size of Las Meninas itself, but if Velazquez looks out towards me—towards us—where the king and queen of Spain reflected in the mirror should be, where is the painting of them on this scale? Are we in fact the king, or the queen? Why did Velazquez paint himself anyway, and how is he relaxed while the Infanta Margarita is in a pose she could hold for hours, obviously for her depiction in the painting? Is she looking at us, or her parents? Am I absolved of responsibility for the dog’s death because I did not hit the animal, because someone else forgot to leash it, or am I complicit as a driver; do I condone the existence of highways that are dangerous for wandering animals who don’t know any better? Would it matter if I didn’t own a car? Did that dog really die after all?