Scuola Romana del XVIII secolo

The painting depicts the mythological episode of the theft of Apollo's heifers by Hermes. The latter, after having bought his silence, takes the stolen animals to Mount Menalo, under the supervision of the shepherd Batto, who will subsequently suffer the wrath of Hermes for having broken the established agreements. Here the episode becomes an expedient for the painter to try his hand at a pleasant representation of the mountain landscape, while the figures, not without a certain irony, are still seventeenth-century in the brushstroke.

cm 96x159 - in cornice: cm 113x174