<P> We are looking at a picture in which the painter is in turn looking out at us . A mere confrontation, eyes catching one another's glance, direct looks superimposing themselves upon one another as they cross . And yet this slender line of reciprocal visibility embraces a whole complex network of uncertainties, exchanges, and feints . The painter is turning his eyes towards us only in so far as we happen to occupy the same position as his subject . </P> <P> For Foucault, Las Meninas illustrates the first signs of a new episteme, or way of thinking . It represents a midpoint between what he sees as the two "great discontinuities" in European thought, the classical and the modern: "Perhaps there exists, in this painting by Velázquez, the representation as it were of Classical representation, and the definition of the space it opens up to us...representation, freed finally from the relation that was impeding it, can offer itself as representation in its pure form ." </P> <P> Now he (the painter) can be seen, caught in a moment of stillness, at the neutral centre of his oscillation . His dark torso and bright face are half - way between the visible and the invisible: emerging from the canvas beyond our view, he moves into our gaze; but when, in a moment, he makes a step to the right, removing himself from our gaze, he will be standing exactly in front of the canvas he is painting; he will enter that region where his painting, neglected for an instant, will, for him, become visible once more, free of shadow and free of reticence . As though the painter could not at the same time be seen on the picture where he is represented and also see that upon which he is representing something ." </P> <P> In the conclusion of The Order of Things Foucault explained why he undertook such a forensic analysis of Las Meninas: </P>

Las meninas or the family of philip iv