An anonymous seventeenth-century artist, possibly from Lombardy, made the unusual choice to depict Perseus Transforming Atlas on a small piece of bardiglio grigio, a fine- to medium-grained gray marble with white veins from Carrara or the Apuan Alps (Fig. 5.1). Displayed in the Palazzo Borromeo on the Isola Bella in Lake Maggiore, the painting illustrates an episode from Ovid's Metamorphoses that tells how Perseus, after killing Medusa, the only mortal Gorgon, and taking her head as a trophy, sought rest in Atlas's kingdom. Fearing an old prophecy that a son of Jupiter would steal the golden fruits in the garden of his daughters, the Hesperides, Atlas denied him entrance, threatened him, and tried to drive him away. The unknown artist depicted the moment after Perseus had unveiled Medusa's head and raised it up to the crowned titan, whereupon he “became a mountain just as large as the man had been. His hair and beard became a forest, and his arms and shoulders turned into adjacent ridges; his head was now the mountain summit and his bones were rock. Each part grew to extraordinary size […] until the weight of heaven rested on his shoulders.” Atlas stands out, as he is placed at the very front of the picture plane taking up more than three-quarters of the image, fitting Ovid's description of him as “huge, greater in bulk than all men put together.” He is dressed as a Roman centurion with gray hair and beard, but with a youthful and well defined muscular body.