Jupiter and Io

In 1584 the Milanese painter and art writer Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo saw this canvas in Milan, in the house of the sculptor Leone Leoni. Correggio had painted it around 1530 for Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, as one of four loves of Jupiter, and Vasari says the duke meant them as a gift for the Emperor Charles V. In 1601 the imperial ambassador in Madrid, Hans Khevenhüller, bought it for the Emperor Rudolf II from Leone's son Pompeo, who drove a hard bargain. A few years later its companion, the boy Ganymede carried up by the eagle, reached the emperor's collection by another route, and both are in Vienna today. Here Jupiter is nothing more than a dark cloud. A face is barely visible just before Io's lips, and on her back rests a cloudy paw, which she pulls toward her. Beneath her lies a white cloth, and in the lower right corner there are a deer's antlers and a jug.