The Sea Monster

[1] The woman has seemingly been snatched and dragged away from the river bank; her companions are shown scrambling out of the water in panic, raising their arms in protest or lying down weeping.

[3] Despite the woman's gaze back at the bank and her open mouth, her relaxed Venus like pose suggests to some critics that she is not overly concerned with her plight.

[1] For this reason writer Jonathan Jones described the engraving as a "troubling, wondrous image of the erotic",[1] while historian Walter L. Strauss notes that her abduction may be a device to legitimise her nudity.

[7] Art historian Jane Campbell Hutchison suggests that the Milanese headdress may refer to the Lombard queen Theodelinda, who was also abducted by a sea monster.

[2] The horned Tritonesque figure echoes a description given by Poggio Bracciolini of a sea monster that had terrorised the Adriatic coast in the early 15th century.