Medea using her Magic, a scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses

Antonio Maria Vassallo studied painting in Genoa under the Flemish artist Vincent Malo. Vassallo is best known for his mythological scenes and rustic pastorals. The present painting depicts a scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which Medea — moved by her husband Jason’s request to take years from his life to add them instead to that of his father, Aseon — performs a blood ritual to restore Aseon’s youth (VII, 159-293).

The attribution of this painting to Vassallo was proposed by Anna Orlando on account of its similarities with a painting of the same subject in a Milanese private collection. A copy of her expertise is available upon request.