A nude young woman seen from behind sits twisting on a rocky bank, a white cloth slipping off her hips, her head thrown back and one hand raised. Dark gray mist fills the upper half of the canvas, and the faint outline of a face seems to rise from it toward hers. At the lower right a large urn stands beside a deer's antlers. The Kunsthistorisches Museum tells the story this way: Jupiter loved Io, the beautiful daughter of a river god, and when the shy nymph tried to flee, the god spread dark mists over the land and blocked her escape.

Correggio painted the picture around 1530 on commission from Federico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, together with The Abduction of Ganymede, Leda and the Swan, and Danaë; the duke most likely gave the two now in Vienna to Emperor Charles V. The museum notes that the deer drinking at the lower right gives the erotic scene a trace of Christian decorum, echoing Psalm 42. Its provenance records a possible gift to Charles V in 1532, ownership by the sculptor Leone Leoni in 1584, and the purchase of the picture from his son Pompeo before 1603 by Emperor Rudolf II. It is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.