The Spinners / Las Hilanderas

At first glance: women spinning in a dim workshop. But the bright back room — raised on a stage, sun-lit, separate — shows the climactic moment of the Athena and Arachne myth, the tapestry the spinner Arachne wove so beautifully that Athena destroyed it and turned her into a spider. The 'real' subject is in the back. The workshop in front is the metaphor. The myth was only rediscovered as the painting's subject in 1948. Now at Museo del Prado, Madrid @museodelprado