The first known reference to this work dates from 1746, when an inventory of paintings at the La Granja Palace was drawn up. There, it is attributed to Velázquez and identified as a likeness of his wife, Juana, whose father was the painter, Francisco Pacheco. It also specifies that she is holding a board. The linking of anonymous portraits to the lives of their authors was frequent in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Velázquez was no exception, as various of his works were thought to include his face, as well as likenesses of his wife and children. The only work that could, in all probability, be a portrait of Juana Pacheco is the face of the Virgin in The Adoration of the Magi (P01166), one of whose figures has been clearly identified as her father, Francisco. A comparison of the two works indicates that the present one is of a different model, and regardless of whether it is based on a real person, its content surpasses portraiture and enters the genre of history painting. The information that could reveal its subject includes the fact that the figure is female, in profile and looking straight ahead, as well as the object she holds -a flat, quadrangular surface generally thought to be a board abut sometimes considered a canvas. She holds it with her left hand, leaving the right free to write or paint on it.

While information about this work’s original context is lacking, the elements appearing in it suggest it may depict one of the sibyls, whom Greco-Roman mythology assigned divinatory powers. Adopted by Christian thought, they were considered to have foretold the coming of Christ. In that sense, the object she holds would have been used to represent her premonitions. While she has sometimes been identified as an allegorical representation of history or painting, such works tend to be more explicit, whereas the elements visible here are sufficient to associate her with a sibyl. The latter are generally represented with a writing surface, but sometimes they hold a pictorial one. Such is the case with one of the sibyls in Claudio Coellos’s Annunciation (Madrid, Convent of San Plácido), who appears without a turban and holds a canvas or panel bearing a painting of an allegory of the Virgin. Depictions of these mythological figures had been relatively frequent in European art since the Renaissance, and they are part of one of the most famous pictorial cycles in Europe: the Sistine Chapel. They were also a common subject for 17th-century Italian classicist painters, and there are magnificent examples by Guido Reni, Guercino and Domenichino. In most of these, the sibyl wears a turban, although this is more of an endogenous tradition than a thematic requirement. The present work’s technique and palette are related to paintings that Velázquez made in the early 1630s, such as Joseph’s Tunic (Patrimonio Nacional, Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, no. 10014694).

Fábulas de Velázquez. Mitología e Historia Sagrada en el Siglo de Oro / edición a cargo de Javier Portús Pérez, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007, p.329