#genre painting

This type of scene is called a bodegón — Spanish for pantry — basically a kitchen snapshot with someone working in it. According to the museum's own notes, the woman here was likely enslaved, part of a household connected to Velázquez's own family. Nobody's ever put a name to her.

Apparently this was the first of his paintings to ever reach America — some collector picked it up in Paris for about $800, back when almost nobody had heard of him.