Don Quijote, Las Meninas, and the Baroque Notion of Metaart

Abstract

Don Quixote and Las Meninas represent, from two different artistic realms, a symbolic reection upon the nature of Art. Cervantes’ Don Quixote could be considered a book of books, where the literary phenomenon is dramatized and becomes part of the ctionalized world: libraries, the idealization of books and characters, the literary critique that some characters undertake, and the very story is an allegory of literature. Its contemporary Las Meninas, a painting in which metaartistic reection reaches its height, shows a collective portrait where the content of the canvas includes the artist, the spectators, and, through a set of mirrors, it creates the notion of perspective. Both works go far beyond their concrete themes and situations in order to represent transcendent scenes that show the essence of the artistic phenomenon. A novel of novels, a painting of paintings, Don Quixote and Las Meninas both participate of a similar preoccupation that is conveyed through the pages of the novel and the lines of the painting. This study aims to highlight these theoretic and pragmatic conjunctions dealing with the baroque expression of Art though Art.