From the film-maker:

Though ‘Mercury piping to Argus’ depicts an exterior scene, the sky is so dark that it feels enclosed, almost subterranean. The clouds on the left could be pipe smoke drifting in an opium den. To someone unfamiliar with the myth, the figures seem uncanny, the heifer’s head absurd. Knowing the myth makes it no less strange. The heifer is Io, Jupiter’s lover transformed; Mercury is the hero, emissary of Jupiter; Argus is the villain, a monster with a thousand eyes who never sleeps. Mercury is piping to lull Argus to sleep, and will kill him. And yet the painter renders Argus as a feeble old man, and Mercury with a sinister, vacant stare.

I was immediately engaged by the painting’s atmosphere: earthy hues and deep shadows. But I was also inspired by the crooked perspective it offers on an ancient myth, and the cruel justice of dead gods.

Alasdair Beckett-King

A piece inspired by Johann Carl Loth, Mercury piping to Argus, 1655-60