Art History

EXTERNAL HISTORY:

.Considered along with LAS MENINAS to be one of the

most important masterpieces of DIEGO DE VELAZQUUEZ ,

as if final perido,this metological scene despits MinerraÐ'Ò's dispute

with Arachne over weaving abilities.Traditionally cosidered to

represent women working at the tapestry workshop of Santa

Isable but it now prored that it is mythological subject.It was

probably painted around 1657.The title of "THE SPINNERS",as

it ispopularly known,is a later invention and seems to have been

inspired by the women who are spinning in the foreground

they were workers in the Santa Isabel tapestry factory in

Madrid.This Velazquez painting, considered for a long

represent a generic theme,actually hides the depiction of a

mythological theme draped in the everyday labour of a tapstry

workshop.In the mid forties,sepcialists refused to interpret

it as a simple

every day scen.Their doubt were clarified when reearcher Maria Luisa

Caturla brought to light aninventory in which an unknowed VelazquezÐ'Ò's

Fable of Arachae was mentioned,owned by huntsman to King Philip

4th,Don Pedro de Arcc.One of the problems that hindired the

identification of the subject lay in the fact that the work did not belong to

collections and documentary information existed about it.

INTERNAL HISTORY:

The Fable of Archa,as related in OvidÐ'Ò's Metamorphoese,tells how Minerva,goddess of

the arts and of war,competes with Arachne,famous for her skill in spinning in weaving

a tapestry.The young spinner was insolent enough to prevent in her work one of the

love advantures of the goddess father Jove,and by way of punishment,she was

transformed into a spider.

ICONOGRAPHY:

Even so,Velazquez had used Baroque recourse of inserting a picture within a picture

since he was a youngman, and he linked to reverse the order of important of the

story(i.e putting the trivial forward and the fundamental behind) This canvas was

added onto it in