Erichthonius
May. 5th, 2004 02:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jere7myI forgot to mention that I saw Rubens's excellent painting of Erichthonius, snake-legged baby and future king of Athens, at the Oberlin art museum:
The painting looks very much like an Adoration of the Christ-Child or the Finding of Moses, and indeed hung with the Passion art, but the baby's legs are slimy and tentacular, a touch of Cthulhu in an otherwise typical scene. The artist captured the moment just before the daughters of Cecrops realized what they were looking at and flung themselves to their deaths from the Acropolis.
The painting looks very much like an Adoration of the Christ-Child or the Finding of Moses, and indeed hung with the Passion art, but the baby's legs are slimy and tentacular, a touch of Cthulhu in an otherwise typical scene. The artist captured the moment just before the daughters of Cecrops realized what they were looking at and flung themselves to their deaths from the Acropolis.
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Date: 2004-05-05 04:01 pm (UTC)Also, there was a classicist/art historian who came to Swat last year and argued for a completely new interpretation of the Parthenon friezes as when Erectheus had to sacrifice his daughter to save Athens, instead of the Panathenaic Festival (based on a play of Euripides discovered in the 60s)...she was very convincing.