In 1950 Picasso and Sabartés had a discussion about art. Picasso made a premonitory statement: "If one set out to copy Las Meninas in all good faith, let's say, when one got to a certain point and if the person doing the copying were me, I'd say: 'How about putting that girl a little more to the right or the left?' I'd try to do it in my own way, forgetting Velázquez. Trying it out, I'd surely end up modifying the light or changing it, because of having changed the position of the figure. And so, little by little, I'd be painting meninas that would seem detestable to the professional copyist; they wouldn't be the ones the copyist would believe he'd seen in Velázquez's canvas, but they'd be 'my' meninas".
Seven years later a new meninas would be born, Picasso's Las Meninas, a free interpretation that radically transformed the aesthetic language of Velázquez's work.
