[2] Traditionally, it was believed that the painting depicted women workers in the tapestry workshop of Santa Isabel.

The painting remains at the extended size but is currently (in November 2013) displayed behind a screen with a frame added over a cut-away section revealing only the original dimensions.

Others place it between 1644–48, perhaps because certain aspects of its form and content recall the bodegones Velázquez painted in his early career.

In Las Hilanderas, Velázquez developed a layered composition, an approach he had often used in his earlier bodegones, such as the Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary.

The goddess Athena, disguised as an old woman, is on the left and Arachne, in a white top facing away from the viewer, is on the right.