Latona and the Lycians

Landscape in which a river divides two sets of figures on opposite sides. One of the groups is composed by three figures, a woman and two children, all of them gesticulating; the other set is also composed by three characters: a human, a hybrid (half human, half amphibian) and a completely amphibian figure.
The inscription on the back (“Jupiter e Juno transformati in rospo”) results from an erroneous interpretation of the painting. Instead, it depicts the episode in which Latona (Leto, in Greek mythology), one of Jupiter’s many lovers, having already given birth to Phoebus and Diana (Apollo and Artemis, also represented in the painting), arrived in a city in Lycia. As she intended to quench the thirst on a nearby river, she was forbidden to do so by the locals, who, rather than stopping her, mocked her situation and clawed the water, so that it would be soiled with mud and could not be drunk. As punishment, so that they could live in the water and mud that they valued so much, Latona transformed them into frogs. This legend is told, among other sources, by Ovid (Metamorphoses 6.313-381).