Mercury watching Pandrosus, Herse and Aglauros

The present large-scale mythological scene by the Dutch artist Barent Graat narrates the story of Mercury and Herse (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2: 708-832) in which the god spies three sisters returning from the festival of Minerva and falls in love with Herse, the most beautiful of the three. When Herse's sister Aglauros, envious of Mercury's favor, attempts to separate the pair, Mercury turns her to stone. Graat has chosen to depict the moment at which Mercury, reclining on a bank of clouds, first catches sight of Herse, a graceful maiden in classical garb at the center of the composition. Just behind her is Aglauros, her face half in shadow, her dark hair contrasting with Herse's idealized blonde beauty. Other young women, similarly costumed though increasingly shadowed as they move further from Herse and the spotlight of illumination into which she is cast, carry baskets and flowers as they progress through the arcadian landscape toward a distant hilltop town.

Barend Graat, who spent the entirety of his career in Amsterdam, is known for his paintings of domestic interiors and for multi-figural history paintings. Because he never achieved fame during his lifetime despite his considerable talent, Graat's interior scenes are often wrongly attributed to his better-known contemporaries such as Gerard ter Borch, who painted in a similar style. Graat also ran a training academy in Houbraken to teach life drawing to young artists, and his own familiarity with human physiognomy is fully evident in the present work.