The Picture in the Picture

A painting that is not only a masterful work of art but also a fascinating footnote to an old mystery goes on display this week in Richmond's Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It is Peter Paul Rubens' 10| 1/2-in.-by-15-in. oil sketch for his Pallas and Arachne. The finished painting is long lost, and presumably destroyed--but still to be seen in a copy made three centuries ago by the Spanish painter Vel`asquez.

One day in 1656, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Vel`asquez, court painter to Spain's proud Philip IV, was finishing a portrait of the King's daughter, the blonde, five-year-old Infanta Margarita. Around the demure princess bustled two noble maids of honor and two attendant dwarfs (one got, as a special favor, a pound of snow for each summer-day's work). A mastiff dozed on the floor, and in a mirror, Vel`asquez occasionally caught sight of the King and Queen stopping to see how the sittings were progressing. Seized by new inspiration, Vel`asquez ordered a huge canvas, quickly painted the whole mirror scene, including his own self-portrait, the only authentic one known to exist.

So rich in. family detail and warmth was the painting that it became a royal favorite for two generations; it now hangs in Madrid's Prado. Scholars have long since identified the room Vel`asquez pictured as one in Madrid's Alcazar. They recognized the painting hanging below the ceiling in the left background as the Pallas and Arachne originally ordered by Philip IV from Rubens in 1636 for the Torre de la Parada, the royal hunting lodge near Madrid.

To decorate the 25 rooms of the hunting lodge, Rubens picked most of his themes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, including the famed story of the weaving match between Pallas Athena and Arachne. Bested in the contest, the goddess Athena was doubly angry because mortal Arachne dared to weave scenes of the scandalous loves of the gods (Rubens' sketch shows a scene from the Rape of Europa). Athena ripped the design to shreds, turned on Arachne, who was trying to hang herself in despair, and metamorphosed her into a spider (thus giving spiders their zoological classification: Arachnida).

Pallas and Arachne disappeared after the Archduke Charles of Austria sacked the Torre de la Parada in 1710. But Rubens' oil sketches, delivered to Philip with the finished works, were bequeathed to a worthy duke and survived in various Spanish and Belgian art collections. Virginia's Director Leslie Cheek Jr. got his Rubens from a Manhattan art dealer.

Cheek feels that he has double reason to rejoice at his new find. First, he points out, "it was done at the height of Rubens' powers, and for one of his most important and knowing clients." Secondly, Rubens at the time was running one of the greatest picturemaking factories in all Europe, and most of the work was carried out by Rubens' apprentices. But, notes Director Cheek, "there's no doubt about our sketch. Its proven pedigree goes back to the moment it left Rubens' hand, which is more than we could say of the finished painting, even if it exists."

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