On the left of Dossi's painting, the god Jupiter is painting multicoloured wings on butterflies, that come alive under his brush. As chief of the Roman gods, he is identified by a stylised lightning bolt at his feet. Mercury, with wings on his helmet and feet, occupies the centre of the canvas, and signals silence to the gesticulating woman approaching from the right. Considered as an allegory of painting, "Jupiter, Mercury and Virtue" might be a companion piece to Dossi's slightly earlier "Allegory of Music", though the two works differ in their proportions.
Both have mythological themes: Dossi may have drawn his painting allegory from a legend of Virtue, who supplicated Jupiter's aid in a quarrel with the goddess Fortune. But Mercury forced her to wait, since the gods were engaged making cucumbers blossom and painting the wings on butterflies. This charming tale was invented by Leon Battista Alberti, the famous Quattrocento architect and art theorist, though in Dossi's day - less than a hundred years later - its author was thought to be the Greek satirist Lucian.
Yet another interpretation holds the female figure, on the right, to represent Rhetoric; in this scenario, Mercury would act in his role as the god of silence, protecting painting from interruption by a sister art. Indeed, the air round Jupiter is stilled, stirred only by the wings of butterflies as they flutter from the canvas. Outside, it blows a gale, that bends the trees and billows the robes of Rhetoric and Mercury. An atmospheric rainbow falls from the sky behind Jupiter's canvas, as if it were the source of the living colours he uses. Over 400 years later, the Surrealist painter Remedios Varo depicted a parallel act, in "Creation of the Birds": an owl-like figure painted birds to life under the combined influences of starlight, music, and alchemical colours. Since Mercury is also patron of the alchemical arts, similar mysterious powers could be imputed to Jupiter's (and Dossi's) act of creation.
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