Jan van der Straet travelled as a young man from Flanders to Italy, where he adopted the name Giovanni Stradanus. This is a study for a painting in Francesco de’ Medici’s studiolo in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. After the Trojan War, Odysseus landed on the island of the sorceress Circe, who turned his companions into animals. Odysseus set out to Circe’s palace to free the men, protected by a herb given to him by Mercury, here at lower left.