Phaeton's Sisters Changed into Poplars, and Cygnus into a Swan

In the center, the mourning sisters are shown in various stages of transformation, with bark growing over their limbs and leaves sprouting from their hands and heads. Their mother, Clymene, desperately tries to strip the bark away, while in the lower right, Cygnus is seen turning into a swan by the banks of the river Eridanus. The background features the tomb of Phaethon, whose fatal fall from the chariot of the sun necessitated this divine intervention.

This scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses was frequently interpreted in the Renaissance as a Neoplatonic allegory for the soul's transition between different states of being and the consequences of spiritual hubris. Hendrick Goltzius, a key figure in the Haarlem Mannerist circle, produced this series during a period when Ovidian myths were being systematically decoded for their hidden natural and moral philosophies by scholars and esotericists alike.