Watercolour on ivory, rectangular, in a carved giltwood frame, 27.6cm by 14.5cm.
In a scene taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Jupiter appears in cloud-like form as he seduces Io.
The original painting, of about 1530, by Antonio Allegri da Corregio (1489-1534), the foremost painter of the Parma School in the Italian High Renaissance, is in the Kuntshistorisches Museum in Vienna.
James Byres, a Scottish antiquary and dealer in Old Master paintings, acquired a number of works of art for Brownlow, 9th Earl of Exeter (1725-1793), in the later 18th Century.
