La Pleiade perduta

People have watched the Pleiades for thousands of years, a small tight cluster of stars, and noticed something odd: the group is called the seven sisters, yet most eyes can only pick out six clear ones. The Greeks explained the missing one with a story. The seventh sister, Merope, had married a mortal man and dimmed herself in shame among the rest. That faint, lost star is what Bouguereau paints here in 1884, a single woman drifting up through a dark sky with the other six glimmering behind her. He was the most bankable academic painter in France then, turning out exactly this kind of polished mythology for collectors who wanted it. He gives her no wings and no emblems, only the reaching pose and the fading lights of her sisters to tell you which star she is.