The Blue Astronomer I and II - The Widow

In the shadowy middle distance of the painting Las Meninas are two figures a man and a woman. These shadowy figures echo the shadowy couple in the mirror at the back of the court, a mirror that is the central key to the painting. The woman, Marcela de Ulloa is wearing a widow’s head covering and casts her eyes demurely downwards.

The Madonna/ whore split epitomised in the contrasting figures of the Meninas, and Marcela coalesces in the figure of Marcela in my re-envisioning of her. In this image a halo outlines her head, a shaven head in which remnants of cuts from the shears can be distinguished. She wears the high heels and fish-net stockings of a whore, and in her belly lies a baby, yet as she gazes at herself in the mirror a demure widows’ bandage still encircles her face.