For centuries, visual artists have been attracted to Greek mythology for its slightly sinister, sexual and at times outlandish content. Such was the case for Peter Paul Rubens, as a small but enthusiastic audience would discover this past Sunday during the fourth Object Talk at the Allen Memorial Art Museum. The talk, which was delivered by College sophomore Melissa Fore, focused on one of the most well-known and highly regarded pieces in the AMAM’s collection: Rubens’s “The Finding of Erichthonius.” Painted between 1632 and 1633, the dynamic composition is reflective of Rubens’s late style, employing loose brushstrokes, vibrant colors and sweeping highlights to animate the actions of his figures.

The story of Erichthonius depicted by Rubens is derived from Greek mythology. In Hephaestus’s attempt to rape Athena, some of his semen falls to the ground, impregnating Gaia, the goddess of the Earth. Gaia does not want the child, so Athena agrees to care for it. She places Erichthonius in a basket, brings him to her sanctuary at the Acropolis, and instructs her priestesses not to open the basket. Rubens depicts the moment at which the priestess Aglauros disobeys Athena and opens the basket to discover Erichthonius.

As Fore discussed, this pregnant moment comprises the action in Rubens’s painting and situates it at a pivotal point in the narrative. This notion of depicting the most highly charged moment of a narrative is prevalent throughout Baroque painting, as academic artists sought to enthrall their equally highbrow audiences, who would have recognized visual representations of such religious or mythological tales.

As a member of the 17th century artistic intelligentsia, Rubens was well-versed in the Classics and painted countless scenes from Greek mythology throughout his career. What differentiates Oberlin’s “The Finding of Erichthonius” from other mythological works in Rubens’s oeuvre is that while he was ordinarily attentive in depicting the subtle details and implications of a narrative, in this work there is no indication of the dire outcome to come for the priestesses, who after seeing Erichthonius’s serpentine legs went mad and threw themselves off the Acropolis.

There are various possible explanations for the lack of omens portending the forthcoming tragedy. One is that Rubens may have been working from the version of the narrative included in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which no harm befalls the priestesses. Another is that the painting was cut down from its original size some time between 1677 and 1786. The original composition was recorded in several contemporaneous copies since 17th century artists would train by copying works by ancient or contemporary masters; yet it is impossible to be definitively sure of what the original composition looked like.

Additionally, Rubens did in fact deviate from pictorial conventions of the narrative by including the elderly woman in the composition, who is not mentioned at any point in the mythological story. Rubens was fond of inserting elderly women into his paintings as a visual foil to his radiant, robust young women, whom he often modeled after his wife. In “The Finding of Erichthonius” this juxtaposition between the old woman and the young Aglauros is emphasized by Rubens’s use of light effects. Light appears to be streaming in from the upper right-hand corner of the painting, illuminating the Aglauros’s face and the gleaming fabric of her dress, while the old woman remains in shadow. This beam of light reaches Erichthonius, but only illuminates his plump, fleshy upper half, leaving his physical deformity obscured by the shadow of the basket’s lid. Aglauros’s line of sight parallels the diagonal ray of light, as her eyes gaze upon the face of a cherubic baby.

Rubens might have chosen not to include any reference to the priestess’s tragic fate because at the moment he depicts, it is unclear whether or not Aglauros has yet glimpsed Erichthonius’s monstrous legs. She is seemingly frozen in time as she holds the lid at an angle, waiting to see the terrifying lower half of the child in the basket. Ultimately, as Fore concluded, Rubens’s composition displays his penchant for the dramatic, adding nuance to the narrative in a subtle, but tantalizing manner.