Jupiter and Mercury in the house of Philemon and Baucis

The moralizing fable of Baucis and Philemon is recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses (VIII). When Zeus and Hermes arrived in a town in Tyana disguised as peasants and asking for hospitality, all but an elderly married couple, Baucis and Philemon, turned them away. In revenge, the two gods flooded the town, destroying everything except the cottage belonging to the husband and wife, which was transformed into a temple. The couple were made guardians of the temple and granted one request: that when the time would come for one of them to die, the other would die at the same moment. Zeus kept his promise and, when they reached the end of their lives, transformed Baucis and Philemon into two intertwining trees, one an oak and the other a linden tree.
Professor Ugo Ruggeri endorsed the attribution on the basis of photographs at the time of the sale in 2007 (loc. cit.).