Allen & Unwin Everything is Happening book Art & design English Paperback 240 pages

A gripping and beguiling blend of art history, memoir and travel writing which delves into the mysteries and meanings of Las Meninas, Velazquez's iconic masterpiece.

Michael Jacobs was haunted by Velazquez's enigmatic masterpiece Las Meninas from first encountering it in the Prado as a teenager. In Everything is Happening Jacobs searches for the ultimate significance of the painting by following the trails of associations from each individual character in the picture, as well as his own memories of and relationship to this extraordinary work.From Jacobs' first trip to Spain to the complex politics of Golden Age Madrid, to his meeting with the man who saved Las Meninas during the Spanish Civil war, via Jacobs' experiences of the sunless world of the art history academy, Jacobs dissolves the barriers between the past and the present, the real and the illusory.Cut short by Jacobs' death in 2014, and completed with an introduction and coda of great sensitivity and insight by his friend and fellow lover of art, the journalist Ed Vulliamy, this visionary, meditative and often very funny book is a passionate, personal manifesto for the liberation of how we look at painting.

MICHAEL JACOBS was born in Italy and studied Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He was the author of Andes (Granta 2010) and The Robber of Memories (Granta 2012). He divided his time between London and a remote Spanish village. He died in January 2014.