Callisto1.0122

François Boucher (1703-1770), "Jupiter and Callisto" (1769), oil on canvas; London, The Wallace Collection, P446.

As described in Ovid Metamorphoses, 2.425-40, Jupiter's subterfuge was not unresisted by Callisto. Boucher here makes Callisto quite compliant, in this his last surviving of several treatments of this scene. The Jovian eagle in the celestial realm of this painting, as one sees in the 1763 treatment at the Met, tips the artist's hand to the irony of the scene.

Bibliography:

Ananoff, Alexandre. 1976. François Boucher 2 vols. Lausanne/Paris: La Bibliothèque des Arts. vol. 2, pp. 293-294, cat. no. no. 668

The image at right is derived from Wikipedia Commons, by which the object is presumed to be in the public domain.