The classical symbol is becoming increasingly remote in a post-Modernist era, and consequently more obviously enigmatic. In Burns’ novel treatment there is no hint of the rape inherent in the myth: instead of the metamorphosed Jupiter carrying his girl out to sea to Crete, where, resuming his normal shape, he will ravish her, we have a Europa who seems to be in control of the huge beast, rather than a timid girl clutching the beast in terror as it plunges with her into the sea : as in Uccello’s St. George and the Dragon, where the maiden in distress has the dragon on a leash, this Europa is very much the dominant figure - her dominance shown by her tranquillity.

The only hint of trouble is the beast’s eye, which belies the bull’s seeming docility, and its sheer mass in contrast with the girl’s sapling slimness. The enigma here is not the girl, nor the bull, but the picture. One answer can be found in a Freudian interpretation, where the girl’s virginal innocence seems to have enthralled the beast’s overt sexual power - hence the rope in her hands physically reflecting her confident stare. But in her innocence she does not fully understand the nature of her control, for the bull, like the gathering clouds in the background, hints at the metamorphosis which may at any moment come to her naively confident view of life.