(Antwerp circa 1510/1511–1556/1557)
A Landscape with Juno and Argus
oil on panel, 64 x 86 cm, unframed

Provenance:
Private European collection

The present painting simultaneously describes two scenes of an episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses depicted in a wide river landscape. In the foreground, Juno instructs Argus to watch Io (who was transformed into a cow and presented to his wife, Juno, by Jupiter, who had been caught red-handed while seducing his mistress shortly before). In the middle ground we can see Juno adorning the feathers of a peacock with the eyes of Argus, after Mercury had decapitated the latter on Jupiter’s orders. Above the scene appears the silhouette of the now-freed Io: according to Ovid, Juno inflicted a curse of madness upon her, so that she was forced to roam the world. The subject also occured in Netherlandish landscape paintings of the 16th century: in 1558, Hieronymus Cock published a copper engraving showing a landscape with Mercury and Argus; the same subject is based on a painting attributed to Lucas Gassel in Strasbourg (Musée des Beaux-Arts).

With its raised vantage point and relatively high horizon, as well as the vastness suggested by the employment of colour and aerial perspective, Landscape with Juno and Argus is entirely in the tradition of the landscapes of Joachim Patinir, the first Netherlandish painter to specialise in landscape panoramas. However, both the comparatively liberal and graphic manner of painting and the colour scheme, which differs from the deep turquoise and blue tones characteristic of Patinir, speak against attributing the painting to Patinir himself. In fact, the treatment of colour and the painting style suggest an attribution to Cornelis Massys instead, an artist active in Antwerp whose manner reveals strong similarities to Patinir’s art in terms of motif and composition. Not only did Cornelis' father, Quentin Massys, collaborate with Patinir (for example in Landscape with the Temptation of Saint Anthony in the Prado), but he also functioned as his children’s guardian after Patinir’s death.

Within Cornelis Massys’ output as a landscapist, the monogrammed Landscape with Saint Jerome, which dates from 1547 (Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten), and Landscape with a Stag Hunt and Falconers (Dessau, Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie), dated to around 1555, are particularly close to the present painting. The present Landscape with Juno and Argus, which is a highly interesting addition to Cornelis Massys’ oeuvre, seems to date from the artist’s late period, around 1545/55.

Burton L. Dunbar, who compiled a list of Cornelis Massys’ landscape paintings (The Landscape Paintings of Cornelis Massys, in: Bulletin Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België, 1974–1980, 1/3, pp. 97–126), has confirmed the attribution of Landscape with Juno and Argus.

We are grateful to Björn Blauensteiner for cataloguing the present painting. We are grateful to Burton L. Dunbar for his assistance in cataloguing the present painting.

Provenance:
Private European collection

The present painting simultaneously describes two scenes of an episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses depicted in a wide river landscape. In the foreground, Juno instructs Argus to watch Io (who was transformed into a cow and presented to his wife, Juno, by Jupiter, who had been caught red-handed while seducing his mistress shortly before). In the middle ground we can see Juno adorning the feathers of a peacock with the eyes of Argus, after Mercury had decapitated the latter on Jupiter’s orders. Above the scene appears the silhouette of the now-freed Io: according to Ovid, Juno inflicted a curse of madness upon her, so that she was forced to roam the world. The subject also occured in Netherlandish landscape paintings of the 16th century: in 1558, Hieronymus Cock published a copper engraving showing a landscape with Mercury and Argus; the same subject is based on a painting attributed to Lucas Gassel in Strasbourg (Musée des Beaux-Arts).

With its raised vantage point and relatively high horizon, as well as the vastness suggested by the employment of colour and aerial perspective, Landscape with Juno and Argus is entirely in the tradition of the landscapes of Joachim Patinir, the first Netherlandish painter to specialise in landscape panoramas. However, both the comparatively liberal and graphic manner of painting and the colour scheme, which differs from the deep turquoise and blue tones characteristic of Patinir, speak against attributing the painting to Patinir himself. In fact, the treatment of colour and the painting style suggest an attribution to Cornelis Massys instead, an artist active in Antwerp whose manner reveals strong similarities to Patinir’s art in terms of motif and composition. Not only did Cornelis’s father, Quentin Massys, collaborate with Patinir (for example in Landscape with the Temptation of Saint Anthony in the Prado), but he also functioned as his children’s guardian after Patinir’s death.

Within Cornelis Massys’s output as a landscapist, the monogrammed Landscape with Saint Jerome, which dates from 1547 (Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten), and Landscape with a Stag Hunt and Falconers (Dessau, Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie), dated to around 1555, are particularly close to the present painting. The present Landscape with Juno and Argus, which is a highly interesting addition to Cornelis Massys’ oeuvre, and seems to date from the artist’s late period, around 1545/55.

Burton L. Dunbar, who compiled a list of Cornelis Massys’ landscape paintings (The Landscape Paintings of Cornelis Massys, in: Bulletin Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België, 1974–1980, 1/3, pp. 97–126), has confirmed the attribution of Landscape with Juno and Argus.

We are grateful to Björn Blauensteiner for cataloguing the present painting. We are grateful to Burton L. Dunbar for his assistance in cataloguing the present painting.