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Rubens’ sublime imagination stages a very three-dimensional vignette far above the globe of the earth. The picture was executed early in Rubens’ career and on a distinctly smaller scale than many of Rubens’ later canvases. It manifests the propensity he showed throughout his career toward the use of myth to comment on moralizing themes, here the dangers of pride and carelessness.

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.