Mercury and Argus

The cow in this picture is a woman. Jupiter turned the nymph Io into a heifer to hide her from his wife, and Juno, unconvinced, set Argus to guard the animal, a herdsman with 100 eyes who slept with only a few of them shut at a time. Mercury was sent to get rid of him, and did it by talking and playing until every eye closed. The painting shows the moment after that, the sword already raised towards the neck. The pipe that did the work is still in his other hand. This is a full-size canvas, nearly three metres wide, one of more than 60 pictures shipped from Antwerp to Madrid between 1636 and 1638 for a hunting lodge in the Pardo hills; the Prado catalogues it as Rubens and his workshop. It was still hanging in the royal palace in Madrid in 1814.