Jupiter and Mercury with Philemon and Baucis

Despite their great poverty, only Philemon and Baucis offered hospitality to the gods Jupiter and Mercury, who were wandering unrecognised on the earth (Ovid, Metamorphoses). As Baucis attempts to catch and slaughter the only goose they have, the creature flees to the gods, who reveal their identity to the couple. Then they punish everyone but Philemon and Baucis by letting them sink into a bog. Rubens’s composition provided the model for many other depictions of this subject in the 17th and 18th centuries.