Las Meninas is a truly great metapainting, a painting about paintings. A meta–painting is a painting about paintings, a painting about painters, a painting about the process of painting, a painting that reminds viewers that they are looking at a painting rather than real objects, a painting that breaks the conventions of painting, a painting that obscures its borders or plays with levels of reality. Las Meninas does all these things.
At this point I count at least 23 meta aspects. Take a look at the painting yourself and see how many you can identify: