Witty and meaningful inversion of viewer expectation was central to Velázquez's pictorial enterprise. This approach is exemplified by his two late masterpieces, The Spinners (Fig. 31) and Las Meninas (Fig. 35), but these two works do not stand in isolation from what came before. Instead, they represent a summation of a continuous preoccupation stretching from Velázquez's youth in Seville through to his final years at court in Madrid. Central to understanding The Spinners is Velázquez's unexpected thematization of his own art making through the figures of the spinning women. One wonders whether a similar identification with lowly craft might have occurred elsewhere in Velázquez's body of work. As this chapter will demonstrate, the answer is yes. There is a related, clear thematization of mechanical work in The Forge of Vulcan (Plate 4), from his first trip to Italy, and in some of his paintings from Seville, The Old Woman Cooking Eggs (Fig. 29) and Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (Plate 3). In each instance Velázquez chose a surprising proxy for his own activity as a maker of art. In The Spinners the act of spinning becomes a metaphor for Velázquez's skill as a painter. In The Forge of Vulcan it is the beating of the hot metal that plays this role. The humble act of cooking serves the same purpose in The Old Woman Cooking Eggs, and Christ in the House of Mary and Martha.