Juno and Argus

Rubens had recently come home to Antwerp from eight years in Italy when he painted this around 1610, his head full of the Roman sculpture and Venetian colour he had studied there. The story is from Ovid. The giant Argus had 100 eyes and never fully slept, so the god Mercury was sent to lull and behead him. Here the goddess Juno gathers her dead watchman's eyes and sets them into the tail of her peacock, which is why, the myth says, the bird carries those shimmering eye-shaped spots to this day. Argus lies pale and heavy in the foreground while Juno sweeps in wrapped in red and gold. The two peacocks beside her are already spreading the tails they are about to be given.