Note 258 — 1100. A SCENE IN A PLAY. (continued 4)

See the Second Annual Report of the National Art Collections Fund, 1906, pp. 35, 36. Until the matter was cleared up by the researches of Señor de Beruete, summarised in that Report, it was supposed that our picture was one of five mythologies painted by Velazquez for the Gallery of Mirrors in the Alcazar of Madrid, two of which perished in the great fire of 1734. Knowledge of this fire was doubtless the origin of a suggestion that our picture also had been damaged and repainted. There was correspondence on this subject, and on others connected with the picture, in the Times of November and December 1905 and the early part of 1906.