Velazquez and Arachne

The first thing to say about this painting is that I already know about it. The reason for this is twofold. The first half of it comes from Ovid, who says that we already know everything and only relearn things. The second is that the painter is obviously me in a former life. My full name is Thomas Velazquez Herring. Velazquez was my maternal grandfather's name. He was from Puerto Rico. The fact that both the painter and I spell our names Velazquez is actually interesting; most people with that name spell is Velasquez. This is wrong, and also suggests a different ethnic background than mine. Obviously the world-renowned painter Diego Velazquez is one of my distant forbears who has through genetic metamorphoses found his way into my person. This is how I know the painting before ever seeing it or hearing about it.

 My problem here is that I honestly suck at deconstructing art that is not literature. I know nothing of perspective or shading or traditional symbolism. I do like the tale of Arachne and Athena though. Basically it is just another example of a god being jealous of a mortal and turning them into something horrible. For a discussion of why she does this see my blog entitled "Why Bad Things Happen to Good People According to Ovid and Myself." Something about the image which I really appreciated is the revisionist history therein. For some reason people are incapable of drawing or painting scenes about anything other than themselves. In the painting none of the women are wearing togas, but rather 17th century housewife clothes. Similarly the spinning wheels they are working on seem to be more modern than the Greeks would have had too, but I am less sure on that point. Furthermore I am disappointed because in the Eye Spy of Rennaisance art I am unable to find a post transformation Arachne. It seems to me that there should be a very obvious spider crawling around somewhere on the canvas and I can't find it for the life of me.