[1][2] The subject was a commonplace of ancient writers, and Titian's source was a passage in Ovid's Metamorphoses,[3] which recounts the eternal sufferings of several personages in the underworld: Thither, leaving her abode in heaven, Saturnian Juno endured to go; so much did she grant to her hate and wrath.

There whirls Ixion on his wheel, both following himself and fleeing, all in one; and the Belides, for daring to work destruction on their cousin-husbands, with unremitting toil seek again and again the waters, only to lose them.

[b] Two of them were painted in the first half of 1549; for they already adorned the Great Hall of the Summer Palace of Binche, for which the Queen evidently had destined them, in the August of the same year when Philip was her guest in the Low Countries.

In course of time the Tantalus was lost, and the Tityus and Sisyphus, still remaining in the Prado, were once supposed, on the strength of ancient testimony,[c] to be copies by the hand of Sánchez Coello.

Four colossal single figures (each picture measures more than two metres square), superhuman in form, struggling in torment, with a grand gloomy background suited to their dark-coloured bodies.

Prometheus[d] lies stretched out over masses of mountain rock, of which he seems to have almost become a part; one arm hangs down over the cliff, his body is shrinking and writhing.