Ménippe

Velázquez painted this around 1639 for the Torre de la Parada, King Philip IV's hunting lodge in the hills outside Madrid. The lodge was being filled with pictures: Rubens supplied gods and mythologies, Velázquez supplied philosophers, dwarfs and jesters. Here is the philosopher, and he looks like a beggar. This is Menippus, an ancient Greek Cynic and satirist who mocked wealth and pretension, wrapped in a worn cloak, glancing sideways at us with a faint sneer. On the floor by his feet lie books and a jug, the whole worldly kit he claimed to despise. He was made as a partner to another ragged old sage, Aesop the fable-teller, and for centuries the two have hung as a pair.