Lot Essay
This painting is likely a copy after a lost modello by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, executed in preparation for a large canvas of the same subject which was briefly owned by the second Duke of Richelieu (1629-1715), a fragment of which is preserved in the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio.
As recounted by Ovid in Book II of the Metamorphoses, the daughters of Cecrops, King of Attica, had been entrusted by Athena with a basket they were told not to open. Disobeying her instructions, the daughters were horrified to find Erichthonius inside, the snake-tailed infant son of Vulcan and Gaia.