Felipe VI, commentator of 'Las Meninas'

Felipe VI has made a surprise appearance on the networks to explain the situation The Grandmothers, of Diego Velázquez, to mark the Prado Museum's thousandth live broadcast. The art gallery hosts these broadcasts every day on Instagram, where hundreds of people connect to learn interesting facts about a piece in the collection. However, this Tuesday it was the Spanish king who appeared on screen. His live broadcast was also somewhat different: the monarch explained the details of the Prado's most famous painting not from the museum but from the Zarzuela Palace, with the painting projected on a screen.

The museum's network managers have presented Felipe VI as a "special guest": "He would have loved to come, but it couldn't be. Now you will see that, logically, has scheduling problems." At that moment, from a small table, the monarch appears: "Although I cannot be in room 12, where it is exhibited [the picture of The Grandmothers], I want to share with you one of the most emblematic works in the collection of one of the most universal painters."

The king describes the characters that make up Velázquez's painting while the screen zooms in and out on the image. The family of Philip IV, represented in one of the rooms of what is now the Palau meninas María Agustina Sarmiento and Isabel de Velasco, the lady-in-waiting Marcela de Ulloa... and the Queen, Philip IV and Mariana of Austria, who appear in the mirror: "Some experts believe they see the scene as spectators, just as we do," comments the monarch. He also analyzes Velázquez's self-portrait and pauses to explain one of the painting's great curiosities: the cross the painter wears on his chest, which was added later. Felipe VI also took the opportunity to comment on the symbolism of the 1656 painting: "There are many interpretations of this work... It is much more than a painting; Velázquez places us within the scene and invites us to think. And in this freedom of interpretation lies one of the greatness of his work."

"We invite you to continue visiting the museums," the monarch concluded from the Zarzuela Palace, where he also took the opportunity to make a bit of a joke: "We, the royal family, have around 800,000 followers, so we're almost at a thousand people - they follow the Prado Museum's Instagram.