The Blue Astronomer I and II - The Whistle blower

In the painting Las Meninas, the dwarf Nicolasito Pertusato places a foot upon the king’s dog, a Spanish mastiff.  By placing the two dwarfs and the dog on the periphery of the painting, within a triangular formation, the dwarfs are reinforced as a category to be placed against the norm. The gaze of a new scientific order, characterized by Linnaeus’s rigid structural system which began with plants and animals, eventually widened its parameters to include humans.

Nicolasito, represented as playful and childlike in the painting, becomes the whistle-blower in my alternate version. Despite the mayhem beneath his feet, he is intent on exposing the underlying problematic categorisations imposed at court, questioning the natural Order of Things.