Kitchen Maid at Emmaus, Diego Velasquez ( 1617-1618 ), National Gallery of Ireland

Another painting that I continuously return to is Diego Velasquez's ( 1599 - 1660)  Kitchen Maid at Emmaus which was painted when the artist was at a relatively young age in his career, all the more stunning when you see how he very carefully orchestrates the piece so that the viewer is looking at the maid who is in turn watching the bowl as it appears to be in flight from the table, or more to the point it would appear to be just at that very moment in time when it is about to fall off the table. This has just been suggested by the artist, by, among other things, the way in which he has manipulated the light being reflected back in the confines of the bowl, and of course by the very fixed stare that he has managed to portray on the maid's face. 

This dynamic between maid's stare and bowl is really quite extraordinary, but there is also of course a third element that plays in the whole game of perspective that is being continuously played out by the artist and which has been captured for all time, and that is the almost afterthought that is the very unfinished painting of the figure of Jesus who is typically in religious art the main figure on display in paintings of this kind. One only has to think of Caravaggio's treatment of the same subject, with Jesus as the central figure, while the apostles sit around him in amazement as it is no longer the Jesus they remember, their companion in the desert and upon the lakes in fishing boats, but the newly resurrected Christ who has come back to them, back from the dead.

Well, in this tableaux, there is apparently a far more interesting drama going on here, according to the artist. In this painting, the phenomenon of a falling bowl is a far more worthy subject for the artist, in fact much more justly deserving of his attention. By placing the servant in the center of the canvas, in a Copernican shift, our attention, the viewers, is now focused on the servant and the drama of the bowl, as opposed to the resurrection of the Man God in the background. And, in this act, the painter Diego Velasquez proves that Einstein's theory of relativity was also know back in 17th century Spain. Well, at least to him.