Giove, Mercurio e la Virtù

This was painted around 1523 for Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, the same collector who had Titian filling a room of his castle with feasting gods. Dosso Dossi gives him a private joke about painting itself. On the left sits Jupiter, king of the gods, his thunderbolt set aside and a fine brush in his hand. In the middle Mercury raises a finger to his lips, hushing the woman on the right, an allegory of Virtue, who has come to complain and is told to wait while the god works. The flattery to an art-loving duke is plain enough, that even Jupiter would rather paint than rule. And what the greatest of the gods chooses to paint, on a canvas the same blue as the sky behind him, is a scatter of butterflies.