The ancient Roman poet Ovid recounts how Orpheus, a legendary Greek musician, pacified wild animals with his soothing music. Here Cuyp places Orpheus in a typical Dutch landscape, populated with native species such as bulls, goats, and cats. But Cuyp adds American, Asian, and African creatures, too, including jaguars, a camel, an elephant, and an ostrich. Cuyp probably saw many of these species in person, but he almost certainly studied pictures of them in prints and books as well. His menagerie reflects the explosion of scientific knowledge that came with overseas trade and colonial ventures. The picture is, at the same time, an illustration of a Classical story, a landscape, and an animal painting. But it also makes a political statement, drawing a parallel between Orpheus’s power over the animals and the Dutch Republic’s dominance of the globe.

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