Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Erichthonius.
The gallery
Birth of Erichthonius (Athena receiving the child from Gaia)
Unknown (attributed to the Painter of Munich 2413), c. 470–460 BC
On this Attic red-figure stamnos the moment of Erichthonius' birth is rendered with archaic clarity: the earth-mother Gaia rises from the ground to lift the swaddled infant upward, placing him directly into the outstretched arms of a fully armed Athena, who will become his foster-mother and protector. Hephaestus, whose unfulfilled pursuit of the virgin goddess caused the seed to fall upon the earth, looks on. The child is the autochthon of Athens, sprung from the very soil of Attica — the vase makes that claim literal, showing him handed up out of the ground. Now in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich, the piece is among the earliest surviving depictions of the Athenian foundation myth.
The Discovery of the Child Erichthonius
Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1615
Rubens stages the forbidden moment when the daughters of King Cecrops — Aglaurus, Herse and Pandrosus — open the basket Athena had entrusted to them, against her command. Inside lies the infant Erichthonius, his legs entwined with or replaced by the coils of a serpent, a sign of his earth-born nature. The sisters recoil and marvel in a sweep of luminous Baroque flesh and drapery, their curiosity about to bring on the madness and ruin the goddess decreed as punishment. The composition, now in the Liechtenstein Princely Collections in Vienna, is one of the most celebrated Flemish treatments of the myth and a study in the dangerous limits of human inquisitiveness.
The Finding of the Infant Erichthonius by Cecrops's Daughters
Jacob Jordaens, 1617
Jordaens, working in Rubens' Antwerp circle, gives the same episode a darker, more crowded intimacy. By torch- and candlelight the daughters of Cecrops cluster around the opened wicker chest to reveal the serpent-legged child Erichthonius, future king of Athens, whom Athena had hidden and forbidden them to look upon. The painter heightens the drama of transgression: the warm flesh of the women, the gleam of the basket and the writhing snake pull the eye into the prohibited box. Held in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, the canvas exemplifies the Flemish Baroque fascination with this cautionary tale of curiosity overcoming a divine injunction.
Athena Scorning the Advances of Hephaestus
Paris Bordone, c. 1555–1560
This Venetian canvas depicts the prelude to Erichthonius' birth: the smith-god Hephaestus reaches for the virgin Athena, who turns away and rebuffs him. According to the myth, his frustrated desire spills upon the goddess and is wiped to the earth, and from that contact with Gaia the autochthonous child Erichthonius is conceived. Bordone, a follower of Titian, treats the encounter with cool mythological eroticism and rich coloring. The painting situates Erichthonius' origin in the awkward, half-divine union that the Athenians wove into their claim of descent from the soil itself.