According to Greek mythology, one day Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare, visited the smith-god Hephaestus to ask for some weapons. However, Hephaestus was so much attracted by the alluring beauty of the goddess that he tried to seduce her in his workshop intending sex. As Athena sensed his plan, she fled in disgust, while Hephaestus chased her.

Ultimately, the smith-god caught Athena and tried to rape her, while Athens struggled to escape, as she was determined to save her virginity. During the struggle, Hephaestus’ semen fell on Athena’s thigh. In utter revulsion, Athena wiped the semen away with a scrap of wool and flung it to the earth and Mother Earth, thus fertilized, gave birth to Erichthonius. After his birth, probably out of pity, Athena decided to raise the child in secret and hid him in a small casket.

One day, as Athena decided to fetch a limestone mountain from the Pallene peninsula to use in the Acropolis, she gave the custody of the casket to the three daughters of Cecrops, the mythical king of Attica, as well as the founder and the first king of Athens.

As the girls, Hearse, Aglaurus and Pandrosus gladly accepted the responsibility, Athena specifically warned them, never to open the lid and look inside the casket. While Pandrosus obeyed the instruction, Hearse and Aglaurus became very much curious and in the absence of Athena, opened the box, containing the child and the future-king, Erichthonius.

However, the sisters were shocked and terrified by what they saw in the box. They thought, they saw either a snake coiled around an infant or an infant that was half-human and half-serpent. They went insane at the horrible sight and threw themselves off from the top of the Acropolis and died.

In another version of the story, the action of the girls was noticed by a crow, who promptly flew away to report it to Athena. On hearing the news Athena became enraged and dropped mountain she was carrying, creating Mount Lycabettus in Athens.

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), considered as the most influential artist of Flemish Baroque tradition, adopted the rarely depicted subject for his ‘Discovery of the Infant Erichthonius’, a mythological cruel story that precedes the erotic depiction of the daughters of Cecrops. In his painting, the three sisters are depicted in the act of opening the basket, where a snake coiled around an infant. A statue of Diana of Ephesus,the many-breasted goddess of fertility, represents Mother Earth.

Apart from Rubens, many other painters worked on the subject, which include among others, Jacob Jordaens (Belgian 1593-1678), Willem van Herp [Belgian 1614-1677) and Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (French 1714-1789).