Mercury and Argus in a landscape

Lisse, Dirck van der (active from ca. 1635, d. 1669)

Item type:

painting

Date of creation:

ca. 1635

Height:

37.0 cm  (14 9/16 in.)

Width:

49.2 cm  (19 3/8 in.)

Technique / Medium:

oil on copper

Description

From the Cleveland Museum website: "This painting depicts a scene from classical Greek myth. The queen of the gods, Hera, jealous of her husband Zeus's affair with Io, changed the mortal woman into a cow. She ordered Argus to watch over Io with his four eyes. In response, Zeus told Mercury, the god of thieves, to free Io. Unable to get past Argus's watchful eyes, Mercury lulled him to sleep by playing the flute, then slew him and released Io. The artist set the scene in a landscape with classical ruins. The expansive vista-from the rocks in the foreground, across a valley, to mountains in the distance-belongs to the great Netherlandish tradition of the Weltlandschaft (world-landscape). Emerging in Flanders (present-day Belgium) in the early 1600s, this painting style evokes the immenseness of the world through panoramic views. The bird flying in the open sky underscores this suggestion of limitless space."

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Transverse flute [4093] (held to the left)

RIdIM images

Image URLs

image link 1

RIdIM record id

2132