Jupiter and Europa PK-P-101.538, PK-P-127.571

The engraving shows the moment after Jupiter has carried Europa across the sea to Crete and resumed his human form to embrace her. In the foreground, an eagle representing the god clutches a bundle of thunderbolts, while a small scene in the distance depicts the bull swimming through the waves with Europa on his back. The figures are rendered with the highly muscular, elongated proportions characteristic of late 16th-century Dutch art.

This print is part of a series illustrating Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a text that served as a fundamental source for Renaissance Neoplatonic and Hermetic allegories regarding the soul's descent and transformation. Goltzius and his circle in Haarlem were central to the dissemination of these classical mysteries through the medium of high-quality engravings.