Mercury protecting Ulysses from the charms of Circe

Annibale Carracci completed this mythological scene around 1590, depicting an episode from Homer's Odyssey. Ulysses stands at center receiving a bowl from the enchantress Circe, who reclines to the left. Behind Ulysses, the god Mercury adds protective herbs to the potion, saving the hero from the same fate that befell his companions: transformation into swine and other animals.

The subject appears multiple times in Carracci's work. A study version exists at the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans, while the most famous treatment appears in the ceiling frescoes of the Camerino Farnese in Rome. Cardinal Odoardo Farnese commissioned Carracci to decorate his private study between 1595 and 1597, just before the artist began the grander Farnese Gallery ceiling.

Carracci was among the most gifted artists of late 16th-century Bologna. His work merged classicism with naturalism, rejecting what he saw as the sterility of Mannerism. This study for the mythological scene hangs at the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans in France.