Two Followers of Cadmus devoured by a Dragon

The story comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Cadmus, a prince of Tyre, is about to found a new city and sends his companions to fetch water for a sacrifice. The spring belongs to a dragon sacred to Mars, and the men never come back. Cornelis van Haarlem shows what happened to them at close range. One man grapples with the beast as it sinks its teeth into his face, a second lies dead across him with the claws dug into his flesh, and a severed head and bare bones lie on the ground. Far off at the left, small in a patch of daylight, Cadmus arrives with his spear to kill the monster. Cornelis signed and dated the canvas in 1588, and in that same year the engraver Hendrick Goltzius made a print after it, which carried the image far beyond Haarlem.