Art History
...
most important masterpieces of DIEGO DE VELAZQUUEZ ,
as if final perido,this metological scene despits Minerra´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 Velazquez´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 Ovid´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...
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