ケクロプスの娘たちに発見されるエリクトニオス

The story comes from Ovid. The goddess Minerva hands three sisters, the daughters of Cecrops, the first king of Athens, a sealed basket with a single rule, never look inside. Here they have just broken it. The child curled within is Erichthonius, born of the earth, and his legs trail off into a serpent's coils. Rubens painted this around 1616, not long after years spent studying ancient sculpture and the great Venetians in Italy, and you can feel that schooling in the warm, heavy flesh of the women turning in the light. He liked the subject enough to come back to it about 16 years later, in a second version now in Stockholm. The fountain nymph and the peacock at the edges belong to Minerva's world.