Blanton Museum

Mercury and Argus by Pieter Mulier 

                     

In this painting, Mulier illustrates a scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses in which Argus is assigned by Juno to guard Io from Jupiter but instead is lulled to sleep with music and then killed by Mercury. Mulier, being trained in Dutch seascape, his artwork portrays the classical traditions in Rome. In this painting he depicts a romantic mood with his landscapes of northern Italy and the genre in the west century. The Centaur in this picture is luring Argus to sleep and is painted really dark and eerie. Mulier contrasts Argus to the centaur as light to dark symbolizing good and evil. There are cows in the background to illustrate the innocence of good within each subject in the picture such as the animals and Argus. The centaur clearly represents the dark side of the human and Argus struggles to fall into what the centaur is luring him towards.