Air

This picture depicting the allegory of Air is one of a set of four paintings kept in the Lyon museum that illustrate the elements.

Urania, holding an armillary sphere, is accompanied by a cloud of birds symbolizing the airy element. We also see indigenous animal species from exotic lands—a turkey keeping company with an ostrich, and an owl with a parrot. The milky body of the muse of astronomy emerges from dark clouds evoking the nocturnal world, contrasting with a thundery blue sky in which Apollo drives the chariot of the sun and Diana the chariot of the moon.

According to the dates recorded on three of the pictures, this series must have taken six years to create and the painter created several more variations of it after 1604.