Mercury Putting Argus to Sleep

This seemingly serene scene by Pier Francesco Mola is an episode from Ovid's Metamorphoses showing the god Mercury, his winged staff behind him, lulling the giant Argus to sleep by playing music on a pipe. In the tale, Argus-here depicted with lidded eyes, leaning heavily on a wooden staff-had been entrusted by Juno with the care of Io, a princess whom the jealous goddess had turned into the cow seen in the painting's center. Jove, in love with Io, sent Mercury disguised as a goatherder to kill the giant, thus setting Io free.

According to Ovid, Argus had one hundred eyes, but in Mola's interpretation his hideous countenance is moderated in favor of that of a bearded man enjoying a seemingly idyllic woodland moment. The painting is one of a number of small-scale mythological works the artist painted at about the same time. Four other versions of the same subject by the artist are known: paintings in the Denis Mahon collection, London, and the Staatliche Museen, Berlin; a preparatory drawing for the Berlin painting now in the museum in Orléans; and an etching. With the AMAM's Domenichino, Jacopo Ligozzi, and Giovanni Battista Gaulli, it is one of just a handful of seventeenthcentury Italian paintings in the collection.

The painting, along with one by Sofonisba Anguissola, is among ten works formerly in the Samuel H. Kress collection donated to the AMAM by the Kress Foundation in 1961, and which have greatly enhanced the AMAM's collection of Italian paintings.