German painter and draughtsman. He was apprenticed first to Johann Friedrich Sichelbein (c. 1625-90), then in Augsburg to Johann Heinrich Schönfeld, whose style fundamentally determined his own. He was also influenced by Joseph Werner and French Baroque painters, and the knowledge of Italian landscape and architecture evident in his pictures suggests an Italian journey or the influence of an artist recently returned from Italy.
The painting shows an event in the Second Punic War: after Scipio Africanus’s capture of Carthago Nova, the exceptionally beautiful virgin betrothed to the Celtiberian prince Allucius, fell into the hands of the Romans. Scipio allowed her to return untouched to her family. Here the young man is shown kneeling before Scipio as he reunites the couple.
Heiss painted the subject of the Continence of Scipio on two other occasions.
The scene represented in this painting is described both in the Odyssey (VIII: 166-365) and in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (IV: 171-189). The god Helios, spying Venus and Mars secretly in bed together, informed the god Vulcan of his wife’s faithlessness. In order to catch the lovers in an act of infidelity, Vulcan forged a net of bronze so fine that it was invisible to the naked eye. This he placed over his wife’s couch so as to entrap her with Mars at their next tryst. Sure enough, they were thus ensnared, and Vulcan called upon all of the other Olympians to witness in his favour. Heiss has chosen this most dramatic moment to represent the cuckolded god as he makes his case before his peers.
