Fiction. These paintings were never painted. Images are AI-generated, stories and auctions are invented.

Las Meninas, Seen from the Mirror

From the Whatifs Catalogue, the encyclopedia of paintings that never were

This article is fiction. Diego Velázquez never painted this work. The image was generated by AI and the story below, including its discovery and sale, is invented.

Las Meninas, Seen from the Mirror is an imagined painting attributed, within the Whatifs fiction, to Diego Velázquez (c. 1657). It belongs to the Whatifs series of works the great masters never painted.

History and rediscovery

A 1686 inventory of the Alcazar lists "a small picture of the family, taken from the mirror", never identified. In 2023 a Seville collector had a blackened court scene from a flea market cleaned: out came Velázquez's studio seen from where the king stood, the princess from behind, the painter facing us with his brush raised. X-rays show a first version of the artist's face that he painted out himself. Sold for €132 million in 2025.

Sale

Within the fiction, the painting sold for €132,000,000 (2025). Tap the board to replay the imagined bidding. The auction pictured below never took place.

Imagined saleroom (AI-generated photo)
AI-generated photograph of a fictional auction.

See also

Notes

  1. Image generated with AI from a prompt written by Whatifs. No real painting, signature or auction house is reproduced.
  2. Story written for Whatifs. Any resemblance to real discoveries is coincidental.

Hang the painting that never was

A 50 × 60 cm museum-grade print of “Las Meninas, Seen from the Mirror”, labelled as a Whatifs creation on the back. 29 €, shipped in Europe.

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