# Images that remember other images

Research started 6 September 2026. This supports theatrical decisions; museums' variant retellings are not automatically reconciled into one myth.

## The selected object
[AMAM 1944.96](https://allenartcollection.oberlin.edu/objects/9742/the-finding-of-erichthonius): Rubens, The Finding of Erichthonius, 1632–33, surviving fragment. Cut and overpainted by 1786; recognized in 1939 through a print, according to the current museum record. Do not claim an exact cleaning date or identify Burchard’s physical impression without further evidence. Museum interpretation via Held: the pictured discovery has no fatal leap. The museum also holds a van Sompel print; **visual verification below shows that print belongs to a different Rubens composition.**

## An engraved lead, superseded as a reconstruction witness
[Rijksmuseum, Erichthonius in zijn mandje](https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/object/Erichthonius-in-zijn-mandje--78db958d0713ab0777e56d38ea15fc8b), permanent identifier https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/200257479. Pieter vanSompel after PeterPaulRubens, museum date range1615–1657. Record page fetched directly (web parser failed); HTML openly supplies downloadable image micrioId dyqxi,7330×5298, with PublicDomain Mark link. Primary record describes three sisters, child’s serpentlegs, recoilingdog, and left fountain image of DianaofEphesus representing Gaia. Image reference from og:image: https://iiif.micr.io/dyqxi/full/^1024,538/0/default.webp . Inspect composition before use; inversion or variants must be disclosed rather than silently registered. Theatre potential: an engraving enters like paper remembering the painting. It is an example of this printed composition, not a claim about Burchard’s exact sheet.

## Before the painting, a sketch
[Nationalmuseum NM607](https://collection.nationalmuseum.se/sv/collection/item/17610/), Rubens, The Daughters of Cecrops Discovering Erichtonius, c1632, oilonoak,31×33cm. Record explicitly offers Nationalmuseum photography under PublicDomain Mark. Primary image link https://collection.nationalmuseum.se/multimedia/7/multimedia-1094527.large.jpg . The source worktree contains a Bridgeman file; use museum’s own available PD reproduction instead.

The museum’s Swedish description names Ovid and says the crow betrays the sisters and they are punished by madness. AMAM’s description of its surviving painting uses a different interpretation. Do not take the Nationalmuseum’s condensed retelling as proof overturning AMAM or as an exact summary of Ovid. This discrepancy belongs in deeper sources if relevant. Its visual importance is material: brush sketch, engraving, copy, damagedcanvas, generatedreconstruction, browser—different objects carrying related images.

## Visual verification: two families of images

Follow-up, 6 September 2026. Inspected the source worktree's `cleaning/warsaw.webp` and `cleaning/base.webp`, then the actual images of [AMAM van Sompel 1961.55](https://allenartcollection.oberlin.edu/objects/4312/the-discovery-of-the-infant-erichthonius) and [National Gallery of Art 1975.23.54](https://www.nga.gov/artworks/55248-erichthonius-his-basket). These two impressions have the same composition, which also matches the Rijksmuseum's detailed description and its Hollstein 3 reference. The Rijksmuseum image itself remained inaccessible; its equivalence is inferred from cataloguing and distinctive motifs.

| Feature | Warsaw copy / Oberlin fragment | Inspected van Sompel impressions |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Fountain | Male figure at right | Many-breasted female figure at left |
| Architecture | Arch framed by two herms | Masonry and a large fountain niche |
| Opener | Kneeling at right, substantial gown | Low central figure, breast exposed |
| Other figures | Standing sister, reclining sister, old nurse | Different sister poses, old woman, two putti |
| Dog | None in the Warsaw image | At lower left beside the basket |

This is a different design, not a reversal, crop, or small engraving adjustment. **Do not register this print over the Warsaw image or present it as the lost surroundings of the Oberlin fragment.** The public-domain NGA reproduction could support a separate comparison of Rubens's versions, but it has deliberately not been installed as the selected painting's missing whole.

Independent scholarly corroboration: the [Corpus Rubenianum XI.1, *Mythological Subjects: Achilles to the Graces*, volume 2 list of figures, printed p. 15](https://toc.library.ethz.ch/objects/pdf03/z01_978-0-905203-67-6_01.pdf) assigns van Sompel's engraving to **no. 41b**, fig. 355; the Oberlin fragment to **no. 42**, fig. 359; and the Stockholm sketch to **no. 42a**, fig. 370. Only this publicly available contents/list-of-figures preview was checked, not the full catalogue entries. The [older AMAM catalogue](https://www2.oberlin.edu/amam-archive/Rubens.htm) distinguishes the c. 1616 Liechtenstein series from the c. 1632–33 Oberlin series, and identifies Stockholm as probably an initial conception for the latter. Its search-index text was readable, while direct opening returned 403.

The current AMAM object's phrase describing its Sompel print as after the painting is insufficient to collapse these families. The 1939 recognition story can remain attributed to that record, but neither the exact print involved nor the inference Burchard made has been established here. The relevant longer study is Ludwig Burchard, “Rubens' ‘Daughters of Cecrops,’” *Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin* 11.1 (1953), pp. 4–27; it remains a research lead.

## Usable Stockholm photograph, with its own license

Added unchanged: `assets/rubens-stockholm-nm607-amin-cc-by-sa-4.jpg` (3866 × 3777; 10,295,139 bytes), with machine-readable source, attribution, SHA-256, and limitations in its adjacent `.provenance.json` file.

The [Commons file page](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Daughters_of_Cecrops_Discovering_Erichtonius,_1632,_by_Peter_Paul_Rubens_(1577-1640)._Nationalmuseum,_Stockholm,_Sweden.jpg) credits photographer **Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg)**, photographed 16 July 2019, and explicitly licenses this photograph **[CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**. It identifies Nationalmuseum **NM 607**, oil on oak. The image was visually checked: three sisters below the arch and herms, male fountain at right, no old nurse; figure spacing and fountain design differ from the final Warsaw/Oberlin arrangement. Use as an earlier conception, not a facsimile of the final whole.

Suggested credit: *Peter Paul Rubens, Cecrops’ Daughters Finding Erichthonius (sketch), c. 1632, Nationalmuseum, NM 607. Photograph by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.* Link the source and license in the eventual display. If adapted, identify changes and retain a compatible license for the adapted photograph. This is **not** Nationalmuseum's Public Domain Mark photograph. The museum image and the separate Commons museum-TIFF file page could not be obtained through the ordinary attempted paths; no block was bypassed. A third-party Picryl copy was found, but its muddled dating and incomplete source detail make it less useful than this explicit photographer license.

## Further interpretive lead, with an ancient-source correction

Marisa Mandabach, [“Matter as an Artist: Rubens’s Myths of Spontaneous Generation,” *JHNA* 13.2 (2021)](https://jhna.org/articles/matter-as-an-artist-rubenss-myths-of-spontaneous-generation/), reads the earlier Erichthonius series alongside Rubens's Medusa and Deucalion/Pyrrha: fluids, stone, and paint can be understood as generative matter. This is a scholarly interpretation with strong theatrical potential for changing media, not evidence for an ancient unified rite or an established account of Rubens's intentions. Its discussion and note 86 explicitly distinguish the earlier series from the later Oberlin fragment. **Do not inherit note 83's attribution of Aglauros's fatal leap to Ovid 2.531–565:** that episode reports the crow's loss of Athena's favor, not the sisters' cliff death; the primary-source corrections in `ancient-genealogy.md` take precedence.