Salvator ROSA
Neopolitan 1615-167
Romantic landscape with Mercury and Argus
c.1655-60
oil on canvas
123.5 x 203.4 cm
Felton Bequest 1951
2883-4

Rosa is one of the great landscape artists, and he was also talented in acting, poetry, and music. His landscapes were greatly admired in the 18th and 19th centuries as embodiments of the picturesque and romantic landscape.

The story depicted in Romantic Landscape with Mercury and Argus comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Jupiter, king of the gods, fell in love with the Argive princess, Io. To spare her from his wife Juno's jealousy, Jupiter turned Io into a white heifer. Juno, not deceived, asked for the cow as a gift which, to avert suspicion, Jupiter granted. Juno had Io guarded by the shepherd Argus but Jupiter sent crafty Mercury to reclaim her and he lulled Argus to sleep with music as preparation to steal Io away.

This is the moment Rosa shows - Mercury, distinguished by his winged hat, plays his pipe as Argus, apparently rapt, listens at his feet. In the background Io, the white heifer, seems similarly charmed as she faces Mercury and the viewer, as though inviting us to await the outcome of her fate with her.

The story has a bloody ending - Mercury kills Argus and throws his body down a cliff - a denouement Rosa suggests by the threatening, rocky outcrop directly opposite the figures on the right and by the sense of foreboding expressed in the moody sky, wind-tossed branches and inhospitable terrain.