Donato Creti, Mercury gives Juno the Head of Argos, 1721, oil on canvas, Municipal Art Collections, Bologna. In a space suspended between heaven and earth, Mercury hands Juno the severed head of the shepherd Argos. The red drape enveloping him is broken up by the impetus of flight, almost entirely uncovering his body; in his right hand he holds his sword. The goddess, seated on the cloud, turns to look at him; her mantle, moved by the wind, draws a broad volute. Beside her is the peacock, on which fall the hundred eyes shaken out of the monster’s head. Below is the landscape with trees and mountains on the horizon. This painting and its pendant, Mercury Delivering the Apple to Paris, were donated to the Bolognese Senate in 1744 by the same patron, Marcantonio Collina Sbaraglia, together with sixteen other paintings by the same artist.
The two works illustrate better than others the reference models of Creti, an artist born in Cremona on 24 February 1671 and educated at the school of Pasinelli, within the framework of Bolognese classicism. In both, as pointed out by art historian Renato Roli, there is an ‘ostentatious, captious and calligraphic’ display of the male nude inspired by the models of Guido Reni. In this piece, however, the artist achieves results of pure formal beauty, especially in the figure of Juno, seated on a cloud, in the act of receiving the head of Argos. Her blue dress and cloak lifted by the wind draw a volute in the sky, from which her face and the whiteness of her flesh emerge.
