<div class="description">
The painting simultaneously describes two scenes of an episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses depicted in a wide river landscape. In the foreground, Juno instructs Argus to watch Io (who was transformed into a cow and presented to his wife, Juno, by Jupiter, who had been caught red-handed while seducing his mistress shortly before). In the middle ground we can see Juno adorning the feathers of a peacock with the eyes of Argus, after Mercury had decapitated the latter on Jupiter’s orders. Above the scene appears the silhouette of the now-freed Io.</div>
<bdi>Attributed to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Cornelis_Massijs" class="extiw" title="w:en:Cornelis Massijs"><span title="Flemish Renaissance painter">Cornelis Massijs</span></a>
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<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.dorotheum.com/auktionen/aktuelle-auktionen/kataloge/list-lots-detail/auktion/11382-alte-meister/lotID/216/lot/1951063-cornelis-massys.html">Palais Dorotheum, 20.10.2015, lot 216</a>