Lucas de Heere was a painter, poet and designer of tapestries. He came from Ghent and was trained by Frans Floris. As a Protestant, he travelled to England in 1566/7 to escape religious persecution and remained there for 10 years. This painting is thought to be by one of his followers, possibly a fellow Netherlandish refugee living in England in the 1570s.

The shepherd Argus (sitting in the foreground left) had a hundred eyes set round his head and never closed more than two, which made him well suited to the task of guarding animals. This story, as related in Ovid's Metamporphoses, revolves around the jealousy of Juno. Her husband (and brother) Jupiter had fallen in love with Io (daughter of Inachus, King of Argos, shown here reclining with nymphs in the distance). In order to protect her from Juno's wrath, Jupiter turned Io into a cow (the transformation scene is in the mid-foreground). Juno was undeceived, and asked to be given the cow as a gift, and appointed Argus as its guardian. Jupiter, shown again seated on the left in a cloud, sent Mercury to fetch the cow. Mercury charmed Argus to sleep by playing music, and then cut off his head and recovered the cow.

Juno appears twice in the scene; once sitting in a cloud on the right, and secondly after the decapitation of Argus, taking his eyes as a memento. She set them into the tail of her attribute; the peacock.