Menippus and Aesop Velázquez in Brawl Cat of Eduardo Mendoza:
was going to see The Spinners, but Menippus pass stopped dead, enjoined by the look of that character, half philosopher, half rogue. It had always seemed strange choice of subject by Velázquez. In 1640 Velazquez painted two portraits, Menippus and Aesop, intended to compete in the king's favor with two very similar portraits of Peter Paul Rubens, who was then in Madrid. Rubens painted Democritus and Heraclitus, two Greek philosophers of fame. By contrast, Velazquez chose two characters of little importance, one almost unknown. Aesop was Menippus a fabulist and a cynical philosopher sure that nothing has come to us except what we have Lucian and Diogenes Laertius. According to them, Menippus born into slavery and joined the sect of Cynics, won a lot of money by dubious methods in Thebes righteousness and that he had lost. The legend relates that he ascended to Olympus and descended into Hades found in both places the same: corruption, deceit and villainy. Velázquez portrays him as a thin man, elderly but still full of energy, dressed in rags, without home or possessions and no resources but his intelligence and serenity in the face of adversity.
Aesop painting your partner, holding a thick book in his right hand, which are certainly written his famous but humble fables. A Menippus also accompanied by a book, but is on the ground, open and with a torn page, as if everything had been written without interest. What would have meant choosing this character Velázquez evanescent, always coming to any goal, except the incessant and repeated disappointment? In those years Velazquez was just the opposite: a young artist in search of artistic recognition, and above all, the social upliftment. Maybe painted Menippus as a warning to remind himself that the end of the road to the summit is not expected us to glory, but disenchantment.
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