Page 109 - El Rostro Enfermo

Las meninas would also be mirror images (Velázquez
is believed to have painted this work looking into
a supposed mirror that reflected the whole scene).
Fortunately, the face of the Infanta Margaret has an
asymmetric feature. It is a very characteristic spot,
with an elongated shaped part, like a boomerang,
and darker, over another more irregular part, less
dark in tone, extending at the temple, appearing to
the left (in the right side of the face) in Las meninas
and to the right (on the left side of the face) in
other portraits of the Infanta. These spots were not
properly interpreted until recently, after cleaning
the painting.
Dr. Vito Franco states that the type of spot that the
Infanta presents could be a cafe au lait spot, a type
of spot with a different morphology from other
common spots, characteristic of McCune-Albright
syndrome (fibrous dysplasia of the skeleton, early
pseudopuberty, “latte” spots on the skin), which
some pediatric specialists have diagnosed for the
Infanta. Typically, in this condition, such spots appear
only on one half of the body, not surpassing the mid
line. Therefore, if the hypothesis that the Infant had
actually suffered the referred disease is accepted, the
spot would appear only on one side of her body, that
is, the stain could not have been symmetrical. The
spots appear in at least another one of the portraits,
on the opposite side to that of the Las meninas. It
can be seen, in fact, that these spots appear on the
left temple of portrait of the princess in white ouffit
at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (1656) or in the
one of 1659, also in the same museum. Similarly, in
the work of El Prado, dressed in red and in the one
in mourning of Martínez del Mazo we can find again
the full spot, with the same shape, on the left side of
the face, with the advantage that in this case it is a
nearly totally frontal portrait, which lets us see that
at least the boomerang shaped spot appears only on
the left side of the face of the Infant.

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