A Tour of Ancient Rome’s Best Graffiti: “We Have Urinated in Our Beds … There Was No Chamber Pot” & More

in History, Writing | March 17th, 2025

Apart from the likes of bra­vo and piz­za, graf­fi­ti must be one of the first Ital­ian words that Eng­lish-speak­ers learn in every­day life. As for why the Eng­lish word comes direct­ly from the Ital­ian, per­haps it has some­thing to do with the his­to­ry of writ­ing on the walls — a his­to­ry that, in West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, stretch­es at least as far back as the time of the Roman Empire. The Fire of Learn­ing video above offers a selec­tion of trans­lat­ed pieces of the more than 11,000 pieces of ancient Roman graf­fi­ti found etched into the pre­served walls of Pom­peii: “Mar­cus loves Spe­dusa”; “Phileros is a eunuch”; “Secun­dus took a crap here” (writ­ten three times); “Atime­tus got me preg­nant”; and “On April 19th, I made bread.”

Crude though some of these may sound, the nar­ra­tor empha­sizes that “many, many of the promi­nent pieces of graf­fi­ti, espe­cial­ly in Pom­peii, are too sex­u­al or vio­lent to show here,” com­par­ing their sen­si­bil­i­ty to that of “a high-school bath­room stall.” You can read more of them at The Ancient Graf­fi­ti Project, whose archive is brows­able through cat­e­gories like “love,” “poet­ry,” “food,” and “glad­i­a­tors” (as decent a sum­ma­ry as any of life in ancient Rome).

Romans did­n’t just write on the walls — a prac­tice that seems to have been encour­aged, at least in some places — they also drew on them, as evi­denced by what you can see in the fig­ur­al graf­fi­ti sec­tion, as well as the exam­ples in the video.

Anoth­er rich archive of ancient graf­fi­ti comes from a sur­pris­ing loca­tion: the Egypt­ian pyra­mids, then as now a major tourist attrac­tion. Rather than post­ing their reviews of the attrac­tion on the inter­net, in our twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry man­ner, ancient Roman tourists wrote direct­ly on its sur­face. “I vis­it­ed and did not like any­thing except the sar­coph­a­gus,” says one inscrip­tion; “I can not read the hiero­glyph­ics,” com­plains anoth­er, in a man­ner that may sound awful­ly famil­iar these mil­len­nia lat­er. “We have uri­nat­ed in our beds,” declares anoth­er piece of writ­ing, dis­cov­ered on the door of a Pom­peii inn. “Host, I admit we should not have done this. If you ask why? There was no cham­ber pot.” Con­sid­er it con­firmed: the ancient world, too, had Airbnb guests.

Relat­ed con­tent:

High-Tech Analy­sis of Ancient Scroll Reveals Plato’s Bur­ial Site and Final Hours

Demys­ti­fy­ing the Activist Graf­fi­ti Art of Kei­th Har­ing: A Video Essay

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman Snack Bar in the Ruins of Pom­peii

Tour the World’s Street Art with Google Street Art

Big Bang Big Boom: Graf­fi­ti Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion Cre­ative­ly Depicts the Evo­lu­tion of Life

The Only Writ­ten Eye-Wit­ness Account of Pompeii’s Destruc­tion: Hear Pliny the Younger’s Let­ters on the Mount Vesu­vius Erup­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Ancient Greeks Who Converted to Buddhism

in History, Religion | March 14th, 2025

It would hard­ly be notable to make the acquain­tance of a Greek Bud­dhist today. Despite hav­ing orig­i­nat­ed in Asia, that reli­gion — or phi­los­o­phy, or way of life, or what­ev­er you pre­fer to call it — now has adher­ents all over the world. Mod­ern-day Bud­dhists need not make an ardu­ous jour­ney in order to under­take an even more ardu­ous course of study under a rec­og­nized mas­ter; nor are the forms of Bud­dhism they prac­tice always rec­og­niz­able to the lay­man. What’s more sur­pris­ing is that the trans­plan­ta­tion into and hybridiza­tion with oth­er cul­tures that has brought about so many nov­el strains of Bud­dhism was going on even in the ancient world.

Take, for exam­ple, the “Gre­co-Bud­dhism” described in the Reli­gion for Break­fast video above, the sto­ry of which involves a vari­ety of fas­ci­nat­ing fig­ures both uni­ver­sal­ly known and rel­a­tive­ly obscure. The most famous of all of them would be Alexan­der the Great, who, as host Andrew Hen­ry puts it, “con­quered a mas­sive empire stretch­ing from Greece across cen­tral Asia all the way to the Indus Riv­er, Hel­l­eniz­ing the pop­u­la­tions along the way.”

But “the cul­tur­al exchange did­n’t just go one way,” as evi­denced by the still-new Bud­dhist reli­gion also spread­ing in the oth­er direc­tion, illus­trat­ed by pieces of text and works of art clear­ly shaped by both civ­i­liza­tion­al cur­rents.

Oth­er major play­ers in Gre­co-Bud­dhism include the philoso­pher Pyrrho of Elis, who trav­eled with Alexan­der and took ideas of the sus­pen­sion of judg­ment from Indi­a’s “gym­nosophists”; Ashoka, emper­or of the Indi­an sub­con­ti­nent in the third cen­tu­ry BC, an avowed Bud­dhist who renounced vio­lence for com­pas­sion (and pros­e­ly­ti­za­tion); and King Menan­der, “the most famous Greek who con­vert­ed to Bud­dhism,” who appears as a char­ac­ter in an ear­ly Bud­dhist text. It can still be dif­fi­cult to say for sure exact­ly who believed what in that peri­od, but it’s not hard to iden­ti­fy res­o­nances between Bud­dhist prin­ci­ples, broad­ly speak­ing, and those of such wide­ly known ancient Greek schools of thought as Sto­icism. Both of those belief sys­tems now hap­pen to have a good deal of cur­ren­cy in Sil­i­con Val­ley, though what lega­cy they’ll leave to be dis­cov­ered in its ruins a cou­ple mil­len­nia from now remains to be seen.


Relat­ed con­tent:

Take Harvard’s Intro­duc­to­ry Course on Bud­dhism, One of Five World Reli­gions Class­es Offered Free Online

Learn the His­to­ry of Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy in a 62 Episode Series from The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps: The Bud­dha, Bha­gavad-Gita, Non Vio­lence & More

One of the Old­est Bud­dhist Man­u­scripts Has Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Explore the Gand­hara Scroll

Breath­tak­ing­ly Detailed Tibetan Book Print­ed 40 Years Before the Guten­berg Bible

Dis­cov­er the World’s Old­est Uni­ver­si­ty, Which Opened in 427 CE, Housed 9 Mil­lion Man­u­scripts, and Then Edu­cat­ed Stu­dents for 800 Years

Con­cepts of the Hero in Greek Civ­i­liza­tion (A Free Har­vard Course)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch the Only Time Charlie Chaplin & Buster Keaton Performed Together On-Screen (1952)

in Film, History | March 13th, 2025

Char­lie Chap­lin and Buster Keaton were the two biggest com­e­dy stars of the silent era, but as it hap­pened, they nev­er shared the screen until well into the reign of sound. In fact, their col­lab­o­ra­tion did­n’t come about until 1952, the same year that Sin­gin’ in the Rain dra­ma­tized the already dis­tant-feel­ing advent of talk­ing pic­tures. That hit musi­cal deals with once-famous artists cop­ing with a chang­ing world, and so, in its own way, does Lime­light, the film that final­ly brought Chap­lin and Keaton togeth­er, deal­ing as it does with a washed-up music-hall star in the Lon­don of 1914.

A spe­cial­ist in down­trod­den pro­tag­o­nists, Chap­lin — who hap­pened to have made his own tran­si­tion from vaude­ville to motion pic­tures in 1914 — nat­u­ral­ly plays that star­ring role. Keaton appears only late in the film, as an old part­ner of Chap­lin’s char­ac­ter who takes the stage with him to per­form a duet at a ben­e­fit con­cert that promis­es the sal­va­tion of their careers. In real­i­ty, this scene had some of that same appeal for Keaton him­self, who had yet to recov­er finan­cial­ly or pro­fes­sion­al­ly after a ruinous divorce in the mid-nine­teen-thir­ties, and had been strug­gling for trac­tion on the new medi­um of tele­vi­sion.

Though Lime­light may be a sound film, and Chap­lin and Keaton’s scene may be a musi­cal num­ber, what they exe­cute togeth­er is, for all intents and pur­pos­es, a work of silent com­e­dy. Chap­lin plays the vio­lin and Keaton plays the piano, but before either of them can get a note out of their instru­ments, they must first deal with a series of tech­ni­cal mishaps and wardrobe mal­func­tions. This is in keep­ing with a theme both per­form­ers essayed over and over again in their silent hey­day: that of the human being made inept by the com­pli­ca­tions of an inhu­man world.

But of course, Chap­lin and Keaton’s char­ac­ters usu­al­ly found their ways to tri­umph at least tem­porar­i­ly over that world in the end, and so it comes to pass in Lime­light — moments before the hap­less vio­lin­ist him­self pass­es on, the vic­tim of an onstage heart attack. In the real world, both of these two icons from a bygone age had at least anoth­er act ahead of them, Chap­lin with more films to direct back in his native Eng­land and Europe, and Keaton as a kind of liv­ing leg­end for hire, called up when­ev­er Hol­ly­wood need­ed a shot of what had been redis­cov­ered — not least thanks to TV’s re-cir­cu­la­tion of old movies — as the mag­ic of silent pic­tures.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Go Toe to Toe (Almost) in a Hilar­i­ous Box­ing Scene Mash Up from Their Clas­sic Silent Films

Dis­cov­er the Cin­e­mat­ic & Comedic Genius of Char­lie Chap­lin with 60+ Free Movies Online

A Super­cut of Buster Keaton’s Most Amaz­ing Stunts

When Char­lie Chap­lin First Spoke Onscreen: How His Famous Great Dic­ta­tor Speech Came About

30 Buster Keaton Films: “The Great­est of All Com­ic Actors,” “One of the Great­est Film­mak­ers of All Time”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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When Salvador Dalí Created a Chilling Anti-Venereal Disease Poster During World War II

in Art, History, Life | March 12th, 2025

As a New York City sub­way rid­er, I am con­stant­ly exposed to pub­lic health posters. More often than not these fea­ture a pho­to of a whole­some-look­ing teen whose sober expres­sion is meant to con­vey hind­sight regret at hav­ing tak­en up drugs, dropped out of school, or for­gone con­doms. They’re well-intend­ed, but bor­ing. I can’t imag­ine I’d feel dif­fer­ent­ly were I a mem­ber of the tar­get demo­graph­ic. The Chelsea Mini Stor­age ads’ saucy region­al humor is far more enter­tain­ing, as is the train wreck design approach favored by the ubiq­ui­tous Dr. Jonathan Ziz­mor. 

Pub­lic health posters were able to con­vey their des­ig­nat­ed hor­rors far more mem­o­rably before pho­tos became the graph­i­cal norm. Take Sal­vador Dalí’s sketch (below) and final con­tri­bu­tion (top) to the WWII-era anti-vene­re­al dis­ease cam­paign.

Which image would cause you to steer clear of the red light dis­trict, were you a young sol­dier on the make?

A por­trait of a glum fel­low sol­dier (“If I’d only known then…”)?

Or a grin­ning green death’s head, whose chop­pers dou­ble as the frankly exposed thighs of two face­less, loose-breast­ed ladies?

Cre­at­ed in 1941, Dalí’s night­mare vision eschewed the sort of man­ly, mil­i­taris­tic slo­gan that retroac­tive­ly ramps up the kitsch val­ue of its ilk. Its mes­sage is clear enough with­out:

Stick it in—we’ll bite it off!

(Thanks to blog­ger Rebec­ca M. Ben­der for point­ing out the composition’s resem­blance to the vagi­na den­ta­ta.)

As a fem­i­nist, I’m not crazy about depic­tions of women as pesti­len­tial, one-way death­traps, but I con­cede that, in this instance, sub­vert­ing the girlie pin up’s explic­it­ly phys­i­cal plea­sures might well have had the desired effect on horny enlist­ed men.

A decade lat­er Dalí would col­lab­o­rate with pho­tog­ra­ph­er Philippe Hals­man on “In Volup­tas Mors,” stack­ing sev­en nude mod­els like cheer­lead­ers to form a peace­time skull that’s far less threat­en­ing to the male fig­ure in the low­er left cor­ner (in this instance, the very dap­per Dalí him­self).

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Makes Sal­vador Dalí’s Icon­ic Sur­re­al­ist Paint­ing “The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry” a Great Work of Art

When Sal­vador Dali Met Sig­mund Freud, and Changed Freud’s Mind About Sur­re­al­ism (1938)

When The Sur­re­al­ists Expelled Sal­vador Dalí for “the Glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Hit­ler­ian Fas­cism” (1934)

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí — Walt Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion That Took 57 Years to Com­plete

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.

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When Charlie Chaplin First Spoke Onscreen: How His Famous Great Dictator Speech Came About

in Film, History | March 11th, 2025

Char­lie Chap­lin came up in vaude­ville, but it was silent film that made him the most famous man in the world. His mas­tery of that form primed him to feel a degree of skep­ti­cism about sound when it came along: in 1931, he called the silent pic­ture “a uni­ver­sal means of expres­sion,” where­as the talkies, as they were then known, “nec­es­sar­i­ly have a lim­it­ed field.” Nev­er­the­less, he was too astute a read­er of pub­lic tastes to believe he could stay silent for­ev­er, though he only began to speak onscreen on his own terms — lit­er­al­ly, in the case of Mod­ern Times. In that cel­e­brat­ed film, his icon­ic char­ac­ter the Tramp sings a song, but does so in an unin­tel­li­gi­ble hash of cod French and Ital­ian, and yet still some­how gets his mean­ing across, just as he had in all his silent movies before.

That scene appears in the Cin­e­maS­tix video essay above on “the moment the most famous silent come­di­an opens his mouth,” which comes not in Mod­ern Times but The Great Dic­ta­tor, Chap­lin’s 1940 send-up of the then-ascen­dant Adolf Hitler. In it, Chap­lin plays two roles: the nar­row-mus­ta­chioed Hitler par­o­dy Ade­noid Hynkel who “speaks” in a tonal­ly and rhyth­mi­cal­ly con­vinc­ing ersatz Ger­man, and a Tramp-like Jew­ish Bar­ber interned by Hynkel’s regime whose only lines come at the film’s very end.

Dressed as the dic­ta­tor in order to escape the camp, the Bar­ber sud­den­ly finds him­self giv­ing a speech at a vic­to­ry parade. When he speaks, he famous­ly does so in Chap­lin’s nat­ur­al voice, express­ing sen­ti­ments that sound like Chap­lin’s own: inveigh­ing against “machine men with machine minds,” mak­ing a plea for lib­er­ty, broth­er­hood, and good­will toward men.

Though it may have been Chap­lin’s biggest box-office hit, The Great Dic­ta­tor isn’t his most crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed pic­ture. When it was made, the Unit­ed States had yet to enter the war, and the full nature of what the Nazis were doing in Europe had­n’t yet come to light. This film’s rela­tion­ship with actu­al his­tor­i­cal events thus feels uneasy, as if Chap­lin him­self was­n’t sure how light or heavy a tone to strike. Even his cli­mac­tic speech was only cre­at­ed as a replace­ment for an intend­ed final dance sequence, though he did work at it, writ­ing and revis­ing over a peri­od of months. It’s more than a lit­tle iron­ic that The Great Dic­ta­tor is main­ly remem­bered for a scene in which a com­ic genius to whom words were noth­ing as against image and move­ment for­goes all the tech­niques that made him a star — and indeed, for­goes com­e­dy itself.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Char­lie Chaplin’s Final Speech in The Great Dic­ta­tor: A State­ment Against Greed, Hate, Intol­er­ance & Fas­cism (1940)

Char­lie Chap­lin Finds Com­e­dy Even in the Bru­tal­i­ty of WWI: A Scene from Shoul­der Arms (1918)

The Char­lie Chap­lin Archive Opens, Putting Online 30,000 Pho­tos & Doc­u­ments from the Life of the Icon­ic Film Star

How Char­lie Chap­lin Used Ground­break­ing Visu­al Effects to Shoot the Death-Defy­ing Roller Skate Scene in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Go Toe to Toe (Almost) in a Hilar­i­ous Box­ing Scene Mash Up from Their Clas­sic Silent Films

Dis­cov­er the Cin­e­mat­ic & Comedic Genius of Char­lie Chap­lin with 60+ Free Movies Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Historian Answers Burning Questions About The Renaissance

in Art, History | March 6th, 2025

Cour­tesy of Wired, his­to­ri­an Alexan­der Bevilac­qua (Williams Col­lege) answers the inter­net’s burn­ing ques­tions about the cul­tur­al rebirth that came to be known as The Renais­sance. In 30+ min­utes, Bevilac­qua cov­ers an array of ques­tions, includ­ing: When did The Renais­sance begin? What exact­ly was the Renais­sance? Why do paint­ings like the Mona Lisa and The Birth of Venus remain so famous cen­turies lat­er? What did peo­ple’s diets con­sist of dur­ing The Renais­sance? How was their hygiene? How did Brunelleschi build a dome in Flo­rence that defied grav­i­ty? What is inside Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s note­books? And the ques­tions go on…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Michelangelo’s David: The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Renais­sance Mar­ble Cre­ation

How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Sto­ry of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi and the Duo­mo in Flo­rence

What Makes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa a Great Paint­ing?: An Expla­na­tion in 15 Min­utes

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

Renais­sance Knives Had Music Engraved on the Blades & Now You Can Hear the Songs Per­formed by Mod­ern Singers

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books Get Dig­i­tized: Where to Read the Renais­sance Man’s Man­u­scripts Online

Machiavelli’s The Prince Explained in an Illus­trat­ed Film

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How the Nazis Waged War on Modern Art: Inside the “Degenerate Art” Exhibition of 1937

in Art, History | March 4th, 2025

Before his fate­ful entry into pol­i­tics, Adolf Hitler want­ed to be an artist. Even to the most neu­tral imag­in­able observ­er, the known exam­ples of the esti­mat­ed 2,000 to 3,000 paint­ings and oth­er works of art he pro­duced in his ear­ly adult­hood would hard­ly evi­dence aston­ish­ing genius. They do show a cer­tain tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence, espe­cial­ly where build­ings are con­cerned. (Twice reject­ed from the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts Vien­na, the young Hitler was advised to apply instead to the School of Archi­tec­ture, a sub­ject for which he also pro­fessed a pas­sion.) But their lack of imag­i­na­tion and inter­est in human­i­ty were too plain to ignore.

Could Hitler’s fail­ure to gain entry to the art world explain any­thing about the cul­tur­al pol­i­cy of the Nazi Par­ty he went on to lead? Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured that pol­i­cy’s sin­gle defin­ing event: Die Ausstel­lung “Entartete Kun­st,” or the Degen­er­ate Art exhi­bi­tion, staged in 1937 at the Insti­tute of Archae­ol­o­gy in Munich’s Hof­garten.

Pre­sent­ing 650 con­fis­cat­ed works of art pur­port­ed to “insult Ger­man feel­ing, or destroy or con­fuse nat­ur­al form or sim­ply reveal an absence of ade­quate man­u­al and artis­tic skill,” it soon became a great hit, attract­ing one mil­lion atten­dees in its first six weeks.

That may not come as much of a sur­prise when you con­sid­er the artists whose work was on dis­play: Paul Klee, Georg Grosz, Otto Dix, Hen­ri Matisse, Pablo Picas­so, Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Piet Mon­dri­an, Marc Cha­gall, and even Grant Wood, to name just a few. It seems that the Nazis could come up with noth­ing quite so fas­ci­nat­ing for the planned first Große Deutsche Kun­stausstel­lung, or “Great Ger­man Art Exhi­bi­tion,” whose col­lapse inspired Hitler’s chief pro­pa­gan­dist Joseph Goebbels to sug­gest putting on a show not of the work that the Nazis approved, but of the work they didn’t.

An admir­er of cer­tain Expres­sion­ists, Goebbels dis­played more cul­tur­al open-mind­ed­ness than the Führer, who prac­ti­cal­ly declared a war on mod­ern art itself. You can learn more about it from David Gru­bin’s doc­u­men­tary Degen­er­ate Art, which is avail­able to watch online. The Nazis con­fis­cat­ed more than 5,000 works of art, and even main­tained files on no few­er than 16,000 that they’d labeled “degen­er­ate,” a his­toric inven­to­ry that has been made avail­able to the pub­lic. Sur­pris­ing­ly, their black­list did not include the oeu­vre of Gus­tav Klimt, which they attempt­ed to use for their own ends. It could be that, deep down, Hitler, the failed artist, knew good art when he saw it — and that it just made him all the more resent­ful.

Relat­ed con­tent:

When the Nazis Declared War on Expres­sion­ist Art (1937)

The 16,000 Art­works the Nazis Cen­sored and Labeled “Degen­er­ate Art”: The Com­plete His­toric Inven­to­ry Is Now Online

How the Avant-Garde Art of Gus­tav Klimt Got Per­verse­ly Appro­pri­at­ed by the Nazis

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

How France Hid the Mona Lisa & Oth­er Lou­vre Mas­ter­pieces Dur­ing World War II

When Ger­man Per­for­mance Artist Ulay Stole Hitler’s Favorite Paint­ing & Hung it in the Liv­ing Room of a Turk­ish Immi­grant Fam­i­ly (1976)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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What Makes Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas One of the Most Fascinating Paintings in Art History

in Art, History | February 26th, 2025

Diego Velázquez paint­ed Las Meni­nas almost 370 years ago, and it’s been under scruti­ny ever since. If the pub­lic’s appetite to know more about it has dimin­ished over time, that cer­tain­ly isn’t reflect­ed in the view count of the analy­sis from YouTube chan­nel Rab­bit Hole above, which as of this writ­ing has crossed the 2.5 mil­lion mark. So has this video on Las Meni­nas from Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer. What ele­ment of this par­tic­u­lar paint­ing has stoked such fas­ci­na­tion, gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion? Eas­i­er, per­haps, to ask what ele­ment has­n’t.

“Through the 36 years he worked for King Philip IV, Velázquez pro­duced dozens of paint­ings of the Span­ish roy­al fam­i­ly,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Rab­bit Hole video. But the large-scale Las Meni­nas is dif­fer­ent: “the paint­ing appears more like a snap­shot of dai­ly life than a typ­i­cal vis­age of roy­als pos­ing to be paint­ed.”

The fig­ures it depicts include Philip’s five-year-old daugh­ter Infan­ta Mar­garet There­sa and her entourage, as well as Velázquez him­self, at work on a paint­ing — which may be a por­trait of the king and queen, reflect­ed as they are on the mir­ror in the back wall, or per­haps the very image we’re look­ing at. Or could we pos­si­bly be Philip and Mar­i­ana our­selves?

On the rear­most plane of Las Meni­nas stands the queen’s cham­ber­lain Don José Nieto Velázquez (pos­si­bly a rela­tion of the artist), on whom it can hard­ly be a coin­ci­dence that all of the paint­ing’s lines con­verge, like a van­ish­ing point on the hori­zon. Diego Velázquez’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion of him­self bears an even more con­spic­u­ous detail: the knight­hood-sym­bol­iz­ing red cross called the Order of San­ti­a­go. Born a com­mon­er, Velázquez worked for most of his life in close prox­im­i­ty to the roy­als, and seems to have made no big secret of his aspi­ra­tions to join their ranks. Pre­sum­ably, the Order of San­ti­a­go was added after the paint­ing was com­plete, since Las Meni­nas is dat­ed to 1656, but Velázquez was­n’t final­ly knight­ed until 1659, close to the end of his life.

Dif­fer­ent the­o­ries exist to explain who exact­ly added that red cross to the paint­ing, as cov­ered by YouTu­ber-gal­lerist James Payne in the Great Art Explained video just above. Like most works of art that have endured through the cen­turies, Las Meni­nas has its unsolv­able his­tor­i­cal mys­ter­ies, despite its unusu­al­ly well-doc­u­ment­ed cre­ation. But for seri­ous art enthu­si­asts, the most com­pelling ques­tion remains that of just how Velázquez pulled it all off. “Las Meni­nas, with all its splen­did effects, is a vig­or­ous argu­ment for the virtue of paint­ing,” says Puschak. “This gets at the heart of the mir­ror, the van­ish­ing point, and the mul­ti­ple cen­ters of focus. ‘See what my art can do,’ Velázquez is say­ing to the view­er” — whether that view­er is King Philip, or some­one across the world near­ly four cen­turies lat­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Short Intro­duc­tion to Car­avag­gio, the Mas­ter Of Light

The Pra­do Muse­um Dig­i­tal­ly Alters Four Mas­ter­pieces to Strik­ing­ly Illus­trate the Impact of Cli­mate Change

The Pra­do Muse­um Cre­ates the First Art Exhi­bi­tion for the Visu­al­ly Impaired, Using 3D Print­ing

Sal­vador Dalí Sketch­es Five Span­ish Immor­tals: Cer­vantes, Don Quixote, El Cid, El Gre­co & Velázquez

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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