De la Venus del espejo a la desmembración del cuerpo femenino: estereotipos pictóricos femeninos en Las manos de Velázquez (2006), de Lourdes Ortiz

Lourdes Ortiz’s Las manos de Velazquez includes a great number of pictorial referents that become part of the novel through detailed descriptions or by means of allusions. The protagonist, a professor of art history and an expert on Velazquez’s painting, interprets reality through the lens of art; for that reason, he resorts to the iconographic catalog of negative female stereotypes that have been in circulation in Western culture since time immemorial to project his frustration and his impotence, to reflect on the age difference between him and his wife, to corroborate his wife’s alleged infidelities, and even to justify his own marital indiscretions. The pictorial texts selected to express his mental states also reveal his prejudice, his misogyny, his pedophilic inclinations and his erotic fantasies.