Jupiter Painting Butterflies

Jupiter Painting Butterflies, or Mercury and Virtue, Dosso Dossi, 1523-24, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

“The butterflies are a symbol of the volatility of thought, while the rainbow denotes the evanescence of ideas. Mercury mediates between the dimension of manifested things and that of the unmanifest. Jupiter painting alludes to the notion that each ordering principle needs a source of inspiration from the realm of ideas.” except from Astrology, Magic, and Alchemy in Art , Matilda Battistini, translated by, Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia, published by The Getty