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Who is the girl in the center of Las Meninas?

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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

The central figure of Diego VelĂĄzquez’s Las Meninas is the five-year-old infanta Margarita Teresa, daughter of Philip IV, king of Spain (ruled 1621–65), and his second wife, Maria Anna. She was the subject of at least five portraits by VelĂĄzquez, a few of which were sent to Leopold I, the future emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, to whom she was betrothed.