Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Herse.
The gallery
Hermes and Herse
Makron (potter Hieron), c. 480 BC
Attic red-figure cup (Louvre G494): Hermes pursues Herse, Cecrops’ daughter, in a chase painted for a drinking party. The vase is among the earliest clear images of the Athenian princess whom Ovid would later make Mercury’s desire — and Aglauros’ fatal envy.
Lekythos with Hermes and Herse
Attic workshop, c. 5th century BC
White-ground lekythos (Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid): Hermes and Herse meet in a spare funerary palette. The Attic oil-flask keeps Cecrops’ daughter in the same visual company as her sisters — a private, named encounter before the Roman poets thickened the jealousy plot.
Mercury, Herse, and Aglaurus
Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée, 1767
Lagrenée’s Nationalmuseum canvas stages Ovid’s triangle: Mercury at the threshold, Herse the prize, Aglauros the envious sister who will turn to stone. French neoclassical polish makes the Cecropid household a moral tableau of desire blocked by jealousy.
Mercury, Herse, and Aglauros
Nicolas Poussin, c. 1624–1627
Poussin’s ENSBA drawing compresses Metamorphoses II into a Roman doorway drama — Mercury, Herse, and the sister who bars the way. It is the classical French reading of Cecrops’ daughter as the beloved whom envy cannot keep from the messenger god.
The Daughters of Cecrops Finding the Child Erichthonius
Jacob Jordaens, 1617
Jordaens’ Antwerp canvas (and its Wikipedia dossier) shows Herse with Aglauros and Pandrosos opening Athena’s chest — the other Cecropid myth that keeps her among Athens’ founding sisters. Baroque flesh and shock fix the three princesses at the moment curiosity dooms them.