the new emotional blackmailer's handbook

possibly the painting best-loved by other painters ... Velazquez's Las Meninas ... Picasso almost went mad trying to perform a kind of stylistic autopsy to discover its secrets ... richard hamilton took a more delicately considered look ... and i think he mixed his response to picasso with respect and good-natured derision ...

the original was painted c1656/1657 picasso had already known the painting for forty or fifty years before he went on his LAS MENINAS binge ...