After Velázquez.
Oil on canvas, W 160 x H 160 x D 2.2 cm.
“The small vessel around which the Infanta's fingers are forever suspended - either on the verge of grabbing or releasing - is known as a 'búcaro': an earthenware water jug much in vogue among the Spanish elite in the seventeenth century. Imported variously from Portugal and Latin America, these red clay pitchers were fragranced with spices when kilned in order to infuse the water they held with a delicate flavour. But if that was the búcaro's outward function, it also held a rather curious inner secret. Spanish women, wishing to lighten their complexions, would nibble the vessel's rims, ingesting small chunks of the red clay. Some ate the whole jug. While there is some evidence that eating the pottery would have the desired effect (and some undesired ones, too, including altering a woman's menstrual cycle), there is also testimony that the act of geophagy (or 'earth eating') was hallucinogenic and induced euphoria and lightheadedness. The Spanish poet and contemporary of Velázquez, Lope de Vega, crystallized the effect in a famous lyric: Niña de color quebrado / O tienes amores o comes barro ("Girl of sallow colour, you're either in love or you eat clay').”