Jupiter Taking Council from the Gods about the Destruction of the Universe

Jupiter sits enthroned upon a bank of clouds at the upper left, holding a scepter and surrounded by deities including Apollo, Mercury, and Neptune. The gods are arranged in a wide semicircle in the heavens, gesturing and debating as they decide to cleanse the earth with a great flood. In the foreground, the muscular figure of Hercules looks on, identifiable by his heavy wooden club.

Based on Ovid's Metamorphoses, this scene captures the transition from the Silver Age to the Brazen Age, a theme central to Renaissance Neoplatonic interpretations of cosmic cycles and divine justice. Hendrick Goltzius was a pivotal figure in Haarlem Mannerism, and his mythological prints provided a visual vocabulary for the era's philosophical and allegorical explorations of the natural world.