Jupiter was the son of Saturn, who devoured his children because he feared that one of them would usurp his power. When his mother, Rhea, gave birth to Jupiter, she gave Saturn a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes which he swallowed instead; the child was then secretly brought up by the nymphs on Mount Ida where he was fed on wild honey and milk from the goat Amalthea. Berchem’s picture uses an ideal Italianate landscape as the setting for this well-known myth, with the suckling infant Jupiter visible at the centre of the picture. The distinctive form of the signature, Berighem or Berrighem, occurs in other works by Berchem produced before the mid-1650s. The subject was a popular one with the artist at this period, and at least three other examples are known, one of which is signed and dated 'C Berrighem 1648' (The Hague, Mauritshuis).