Athena scorning Hephaestus - Paris Bordone

This painting by Paris Bordone is an important item of evidence in my account of the mythology of Athena and its relation to the philosophy of Plato. It is important to me to identify Athena as a cloud goddess. Some people have questioned this aspect of my work and have suggested that this identification is idiosyncratic. I maintain it is a traditional interpretation. I point to this painting.

Although some have questioned it, the painting very plainly depicts the following scenario from Athenian mythology as described by Apollodorus:

Athena came to Hephaestus, desirous of fashioning arms. But he, being forsaken by Aphrodite, fell in love with Athena, and began to pursue her; but she fled. When he got near her with much ado (for he was lame), he attempted to embrace her; but she, being a chaste virgin, would not submit to him, and he ejaculated on the leg of the goddess. In disgust she wiped of the semen with wool and threw it to the ground; and as she fled, the ejaculate fell to the ground, and Erichthonius was produced.

In my interpretation of this myth, it is essentially an agricultural myth about rain and fertility. Hephaestus is a thunder god. His ejaculate is rain. The wool of Athena is the clouds. Wool = clouds. This is important symbolism to Athena as a weaving goddess.

Again, I have had people - indeed, classical scholars - intimate that my reading of this myth is "fanciful". But, as you can see, this painter and I are in agreement. Athena is here plainly depicted as a cloud goddess and the clouds take the place of the tufts of wool in the myth.

(There is another important symbolism to do with the thigh of the goddess, but I will leave that to another time. Thigh bone = earth.)

Paris Bordone was a Venetian mannerist painter from the sixteenth century. The date of the painting is about 1555-1560. Unfortunately, we know nothing more about this painting. We do not know for whom it was painted or for what location. But it definitely depicts the myth as told by Apollodorus: the chaste Athena scorning the advances of the blacksmith god. The Renaissance interest in the story is as an allegory of the productive power of unrequited love.