The depicted motif is rarely seen in visual arts. It presents one of the earliest myths about the city of Athens. When the goddess Athena went to Pallene in Achaea to find rocks to fortify the Athenian Acropolis, she entrusted a basket to the three daughters of Cecrops, the first king of Athens, and warned them not to open it. The scene on the plate shows the moment when the daughters – Aglaurus, Herse and Pandrosus – open the basket despite the warning, only to find inside a beautiful boy, Erichthonius, who has snakes instead of legs. This story was recounted by several ancient authors, and the motif depicted here is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses(2.562–565), where the news of the three daughters’ disobedience is brought to Athena by a crow, which can be seen perched on the branch of a tree.
The author of this work, the Austrian miniaturist painter Moritz Michael Daffinger, transferred a now-lost painting by Franc Kavčič (1755–1828) onto the plate, and the scene shows all the characteristics of Kavčič’s style. In 1808, Kavčič became Head and Supervisor of the Painting Department of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory, the second oldest in Europe after the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory. Moritz Michael was the son of porcelain painter Johann Leopold Daffinger; he was taken on as an apprentice at the porcelain manufactory at the age of eleven. He later studied at the Vienna Fine Arts Academy, where Kavčič was appointed Director of the Painting and Sculpture School in 1820.
acquisition, 2014