The chapter opens with a description of Raban’s first two encounters with the Velasquez painting Las Meninas and his recognition of its affinity with 2’45” with both works being about the layering of different moments in time of the work’s coming into being. The film Black and Silver (made jointly with Marilyn Raban) plays out in a series of beach scenes narrativised by the Oscar Wilde short story The Birthday of the Infanta written after Wilde’s own encounter with Las Meninas. The film culminates in a dance studio where four dancers perform to a string and vibraphone quartet and where the painting is reconstructed as a sequence of tableaux vivants.