Phaethon on the Chariot of the Sun

Two rectangular plaques, en grisaille on a black ground, with gold elevations and profiling, illustrate two episodes from the stories of Phaeton taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Having learned from his mother Climene that he was the son of Helios, I god of the sun, Phaeton reached his father in the far east, asking him as proof of his paternal love to let him drive the chariot of the sun for a day. Numerous were his father's resistances and attempts to change his mind, but to no avail. So, as this plaque illustrates, Helium surrendered to his son's wishes and given valuable recommendations, handed over the reins of the chariot to him. But as soon as the horses set off at a gallop, Phaeton loosed the reins, immediately losing control of the animals. The chariot therefore deviated from its trajectory by straying too far from the earth or coming too close, burning and destroying whatever was struck by its rays. It was Zeus who put an end to that disastrous trajectory by hurling a thunderbolt at the chariot from which Phaeton, as the second plaque illustrates, fell ruinously. The body fell into the Eridanus River, where it was found much later by the Argonauts, still smoldering. The Eliads, Phaeton's sisters, gathered on the banks of the Eridanus weeping for their brother until they slowly turned into poplars and their tears became amber. Another friend of Phaethon, Cycnus, also mourned him on the banks until the gods took pity on his grief and transformed him into a white bird, the swan. In all likelihood the two 16th-century plaques, now within recent gilded metal frames, came from a casket. The river god on the left of the second plaque is taken from Marcantonio Raimondi's well-known engraving with the Judgment of Paris, from a drawing by Raphael.