From Ovid's Cecrops to Rubens's City of God in The Finding of Erichthonius

Abstract

Peter Paul Rubens based his early mythological painting The Finding of Erichthonius on book 2 of Ovid's Metamorphoses, among other classical sources. An examination of the painting's allegorical content reveals how Rubens's approach to the meaning of this myth is comparable to the manner in which Ovid wove different mythological episodes together into a metanarrative of transformations at the core of his poem. Specifically, by means of complex visual allusions, Rubens accomplished a similar layering of stories, which serves to relate this Attic foundation myth to a larger theme of Christianity's succession to paganism.