Author Arachne

n mythology. The myth does not appear in the repertory of the Attic vase-painters. It is narrated in Ovid's Metamorphoses (vi.5-54 and 129-145) and mentioned in Virgil's Georgics (iv. 246). As these sources are all Roman, they identified the goddess as Minerva. According to Pliny's Natural History[3] she discovered the use of linen as well as nets. Pliny reports that she had a son named Closter who discovered the spindle for spinning wool. Arachne was the daughter of Idmon of Colophon, who was a famous wool dyer in Tyrian purple. She was a fine weaver in Hypaepa of Lydia.[4] She was as skillful as the finest artist of the day and much praise was given to her in Hypaepa, where she had her workshop. This all went to her head and eventually Arachne became so conceited of her skill as a weaver that she began claiming that her skill was greater than that of Athena,[5] the goddess of wisdom and war as well as the weaving arts. Athena was angered, but gave Arachne a chance to redeem herself. Assuming the form of an old woman, she warned Arachne not to offend the gods. Arachne scoffed and wished for a weaving contest, so she could prove her skill. Athena dropped her disguise and the contest began. Athena wove the scene of her victory over Poseidon that had inspired the people of Athens to name their city for her. According to Ovid's Latin narrative, Arachne's tapestry featured twenty-one episodes of the infidelity of the gods, disguised as animals: Jupiter being unfaithful with Leda, with Europa, with Danaë. Even Athena admitted that Arachne's work was flawless. Her envy at such human competition drove her into uncontrolled fury and violence. Perhaps she was as well outraged at Arachne's disrespectful choice of subjects that displayed the failings and transgressions of the gods (this takes for granted a late, moralizing view of Greek myth). Losing her temper, she destroyed Arachne's tapestry and loom, striking it with her shuttle, and struck Arachne on the head as well, slashing her face. Arachne, refusing to bow to Athena, hanged herself: “Nor could Arachne take such punishment: She'd rather hang herself than bow her head.” (The moralizing perspective suggests that she "realized her folly and was crushed with shame."). In Ovid's telling, Athena took pity - or spite! - on Arachne. Sprinkling her with the juices of aconite, Athena loosened the rope, which became a spider web, causing Arachne to lose her hair, her ears and nose, metamorphosing into a spider. "So you shall live,Bad girl, to swing, to live now and forever,Even to the last hanging creature of your kind." The story suggests that the origin of weaving lay in imitation of spiders and that it was considered to have been perfected first in Asia Minor. From arachne are derived the taxonomical class name Arachnida, and the name for spiders in many romance languages. The metamorphosis of Arachne in Ovid's telling furnished material for an episode in Edmund Spenser's mock-heroic Muiopotmos, 257-352.[6] Spenser's adaptation, which "rereads an Ovidian story in terms of the Elizabethan world"[7] is designed to provide a rationale for the hatred of Arachne's descendent Aragnoll for the butterfly-hero Clarion. The tale of Arachne inspired one of Velázquez' most interesting paintings: Las Hilanderas ("The Spinners, or The fable of Arachne", in the Prado), in which the painter represents the two important moments of the myth. In the front, the contest of Arachne and the goddess (the young and the old weaver), in the back, an Abduction of Europa that is a copy of Titian's version (or maybe of Rubens' copy of Titian). In front of it appears Minerva in the moment she is punishing Arachne. It transforms the myth into a reflection about creation and imitation, god and man, master and pupil (and therefore about the nature of art).