In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, the Roman god Jupiter transforms his mortal lover, Io, into a heifer to protect her from his jealous wife, Juno. When Juno discovers this, she directs Argus—a monster with one hundred eyes—to keep watch over Io so that her husband cannot retrieve his lover. Jupiter then seeks the help of the god Mercury, who disguises himself as a shepherd and, after lulling the monster to sleep with his pipe, beheads him.

In this sculpture, we see Mercury, having completed his task, holding Argus’s head in his left hand. He no longer wears the guise of a shepherd, and Argus is depicted with only two eyes. Mercury’s pose with left foot lifted may suggest that the figure was designed to stand on the decapitated body of Argus. The blade of the sword in his right hand is a later replacement.

Effortlessly spiraling figures such as this Mercury simultaneously evoke the pliability of wax and depend on the tensile strength of bronze. This intriguing statuette can be linked with the Dutch bronze caster Willem van Tetrode, who restored antique marble sculpture and spent almost twenty years in Italy working with such celebrated artists as Benvenuto Cellini and Guglielmo della Porta. Tetrode’s innovative bronzes inspired later generations in Italy and the Netherlands and had a significant impact on the development of a transnational style of sculpture in the two regions in the 1550s and 60s.