The motif of how
the daughters of
Cecrops discovered the infant Erichthonius, in our case presented on a
porcelain plate, is very rare in the visual arts. It relates to one of the
earliest myths about the city of Athens. When the goddess Athena went to fetch
limestone rocks from the Pallene in Achaea to use in fortifying the Acropolis
of Athens, she gave a wicker box to the three daughters of Cecrops, the
first king of Athens, to take care of it, but warned them never to open it. The scene depicted on the plate shows the moment
when the sisters Aglaurus, Herse and Pandrosus, overcome by curiosity, open the
box despite the ban. They find a sweet infant boy inside, Erichthonius, who, to
their horror, has two snakes instead of legs. In some variants of the myth a
snake is coiled around his body that Athena has laid by the boy for protection.
The story was told
by several ancient authors; the scene on this plate follows the account in
Ovid’s Metamorphoses (2.562‒565) which says that two sisters obeyed
Athena’s order, but the third one opened the basket nevertheless. The news was
brought to Athena by a crow which is perched on a branch of a tree in the
present scene. Unlike other authors, Ovid does not report on the punishment of
Cecrops’ daughters for their curiosity and disobedience; elsewhere it is said
that, being terrified at the view of the infant, they went insane, threw
themselves off the Acropolis and were killed. The snake fled from the basket and
found shelter on the aegis of Athena.
The Greek scholar Apollodorus (c. 180 BC‒120 BC) tells the story of
Athena visiting the smith-god Hephaestus to see how the making of her armour
was going on. Hephaestus, lonely and deserted by Aphrodite, was overcome by
desire and tried to rape her, but she managed to fight him off. His semen thus
fell on the ground, or on Athena’s thigh from where, in disgust, she wiped it
away by a scrap of wool and flung it to the earth. The Earth – Gaia then gave
birth to Erichthonius, and Athena took care of the baby in secret, without the
knowledge of other gods. She laid the boy in a wicker basket and handed it to
one of Cecrops’ daughters. Apollodorus continues the story in the same way as
it is described above and adds that after the death of the girls Athena took
Erichthonius to her temple where he grew up. Later on, he took over the rule in
Athens, made the sacred image of Athena, erected a temple to the goddess on the
Acropolis, and founded the Panathenaia in her honour. Hyginus (Poetical
Astronomy 2.13) and Virgil (Georgics, 3.13) add that Erichthonius
invented the quadriga on which he competed at games. Zeus was greatly
fascinated by his inventiveness of being the first human to harness horses to
the four-in-hand, in which only the sun god Helios had succeeded before. Hence,
after Erichthonius’ death Zeus turned him into the constellation of the
Charioteer (Lat. Auriga).
Erichthonius was often identified with the mythical king of Athens
Erechteus who was likewise believed to have been born from the earth and
brought up by Athena. According to Homer, Athena housed him in the temple of
Erechtheion which can still be admired on the Acropolis of Athens. There were
tombs of mythical kings Cecrops and Erechtheus (Erechthonius) in the temple,
the sacred olive tree used to grow by its side, Athena’s gift to the Athenians
which she summoned from the earth when she competed against Poseidon for
patronage of the Attica region. Athena was the winner, since Poseidon’s gift
was a fresh spring he called from the ground, but whose water was salty and
therefore useless for the inhabitants. The spring of water, also called the Sea
of Erechtheus, is shown on the plate in the background, in the shade of trees.
The author of the
plate, the Austrian miniature painter Moritz Michael Daffinger, transferred a
now lost drawing by Franc Kavčič/Caucig (1755–1828) on it. In 1808, Kavčič
became Head and Supervisor of the Painting Department of the Viennese porcelain
factory which was the second oldest in Europe, preceded only by the Porcelain
Manufactory of Meissen. Moritz Michael was the son of porcelain painter Johann
Leopold Daffinger, and at the age of eleven he was accepted as an apprentice in
the porcelain manufacture. He later studied at the Vienna Fine Arts Academy
where in 1820 Kavčič was appointed Director of the Painting and Sculpture
School. The scene on the plate demonstrates typical characteristics of Kavčič’s
idiom; besides, Daffinger translated paintings by numerous other famous artists
on porcelain, among them also Peter Paul Rubens and Angelika Kauffmann, for
example.