Pallas und Arachne

This is a small, quick oil sketch, and it carries a big story twice over. Around 1636 Rubens was flooded with a royal commission from Philip of Spain, more than 60 mythological scenes to decorate a hunting lodge outside Madrid called the Torre de la Parada. This was one of his designs. The subject comes from Ovid: the mortal weaver Arachne dared to challenge the goddess Pallas Athena to a contest of skill, and here Pallas, mid-swing, is about to strike her rival, who will be turned into a spider. The large finished painting is long lost. But a copy of this very scene was made in Madrid, and Velázquez painted that copy onto the back wall of his own masterpiece, Las Meninas, where it hangs to this day inside the picture.