The subject is taken from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', which tells how Europa was carried away from Tyre by the god Zeus who had transformed himself into a bull.
This painting was highly esteemed in the 18th and early 19th century, but for most of the 20th-century was considered as a reduction and reversal of Veronese's painting in the Doge's Palace, Venice. However, it is certainly an autograph by Veronese and may represent an earlier conception of this subject.
