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Jupiter and Io
Correggio · Renaissance & Mannerism
- Artist
- Antonio Allegri da Correggio (c. 1489–1534)
- Date
- c. 1530–1532
- Dimensions
- 163.5 x 70.5 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria
Correggio’s Jupiter and Io illustrates a story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: the king of the gods, to hide from his jealous wife, takes the form of a dark cloud and embraces the nymph Io. It belonged to a series of paintings on Jupiter’s loves made for Federico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua.
A closer look
Io, seen from behind, sits on a cloth and leans back into the misty cloud, from which a faint face and a hand emerge to hold her. Her expression is one of complete abandon. Correggio was a master of soft transitions of light, and here the boundary between body and vapour almost disappears. Below, a deer drinks from a stream, a small detail that grounds the dreamlike scene in the real world.