Phaethon1.0030

Hendrik Goltzius, "Phaethon" engraving 1588, on of the "Four Disgracers" after Cornelisz van Haarlem? (lost), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Hofmann 1987 no. 4.23

The Four Disgracers, a set of engravings by Goltzius, include Tantalus, Icarus, Ixion, and Phaethon.

Given the timing, the aftermath of the Spanish Armada's defeat by Elizabeth I of England and the concomitant rescue of the Netherlands from Philips' overreaching in the same year, this engraving might be as celebratory as it is corrective.

Dutch artists were likely not at all worried about the ancient, and learned disagreement over Phaethon's paternity. Some mythographers considered Phaethon to have been the son of Helios, the sun-god; others said that he was the son of Eos and Cephalus or some other couple. Euripides' play Phaethon makes him the foundling raised by Merops and Clymene, thus a prince of Earth's easternmost land but literal offspring of Helios. Ovid plays with that myth; but Renaissance artists could not have cared less in Ovid's learned thoughts; they followed his story and imported a moral of their own.