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Thesis 1: painting as bid for inclusion in the family

Evidence: the painter’s inclusion of himself with the family—the king, queen, and princess—in a fairly domestic scene

Thesis 2: painting as bid for appreciation of painter’s status and brilliance as an artist

Evidence: prominence of easel and brush and painter himself in the painting; painter’s confident stare and the apparent decentering of king and queen; painting set in artist’s studio—his space

Thesis 3: painting as bid for credit for being loyal friend and servant

Evidence: painter’s location of himself among other loyal servants at court (ladies in waiting, dog, and large dwarf)

Step 3: Locate evidence that is not adequately accounted for by each thesis.

Step 4: Make explicit the apparent mismatch between the thesis and selected evidence.

What happens when the writer begins to search for evidence that doesn’t seem to be adequately accounted for by her various thesis formulations?

Thesis 1: painting as bid for inclusion in the family

Evidence mismatches: presence of painter among servants; foregrounding of servants in image and in painting’s title (The Ladies in Waiting)— painter’s large size (larger than king and queen) does not go with the idea of “inclusion,” and emphasis on servants does not go with inclusion in royal family

Thesis 2: painting as bid for appreciation of painter’s status and brilliance as an artist

Evidence mismatches: prominence of other servants in the painting; emphasis on family as much as or more than on artist himself—if bidding for status, painter would not present himself as just one of the servants, nor might he give so much attention to the princess (and the king and queen’s regard for her)

Thesis 3: painting as bid for credit for being loyal friend and servant

Evidence mismatches: painter’s prominence; his confident stare; prominence of easel and brush; small size of king and queen (smaller than servants)—if painter wished to emphasize loyalty and service, his subordinate relationship to the more powerful at court, he would have made himself and the tools of his trade less important

Step 5: Choose the claim that seems to account for the most evidence and then reshape that claim to better accommodate evidence that doesn’t fit.

When you’ve found conflicting or inadequately explained evidence, try using it to evolve your existing thesis rather than beating a too-hasty retreat. The direction in which the writer’s thinking is moving—that the painting asks for someone’s strengths to be recognized—is not an entirely new start. The shift she is apparently making but not yet overtly articulating is from the painting as showcase of royal power to the painting as showcase of the painter’s own power.

In order to better formulate this claim, the writer should query what she is emphasizing as the primary feature of her evidence: size, especially that of the king and queen versus the painter. She could do this by pushing her thinking with the question So what?

So what that the king and queen are small, but the painter, princess, and dwarf (another servant) are all large and fairly equal in size and/or prominence?

So what that there are size differences in the painting? What might large or small size mean?

Here are possible answers to the “So what?” questions:

Perhaps the relative size and/or prominence of figures in the painting can be read as indicators of their importance or of what the painter wants to say about their importance.

Perhaps the king and queen have been reduced so that Velázquez can showcase their daughter, the princess.

Perhaps the size and physical prominence of the king and queen are relatively unimportant. In that case, what matters is that they are a presence, always overseeing events (an idea implied but not developed by the writer in paragraph 6).

Perhaps the painter is demonstrating his own ability to make the king and queen any size—any level of importance—he chooses. Although the writer does not overtly say so, the king and queen are among the