194. THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS.
Rubens (Flemish: 1577-1640). See 38.
At the wedding of Thetis and Peleus an apple was thrown amongst the guests by the Goddess of Discord, to be given to the most beautiful. Paris, the Trojan shepherd, was ordered by Jupiter to decide the contest. He is here seated with Mercury, the messenger of the gods, at his side, about to award the apple to Venus. On the right of Venus is Juno with her peacock at her feet; on the left, Minerva, with her owl perched behind her. Paris thus chose Pleasure, instead of Power or Wisdom; and from his choice came, the story adds, all the troubling of domestic peace involved in the Trojan War. The Goddess of Discord, already assured of her victory and its consequences, hovers in the clouds above, spreading fire and pestilence.
This picture—one of Rubens's masterpieces and "evidently entirely the work of his own hand"—belongs to his latest period; "never did he show his intense appreciation of the beauty of flesh and the delights of colour more conspicuously than in the pictures of his old age." Characteristic also is the painter's treatment of the subject. The goddesses are as substantial as any figures of flesh and blood; the picture is realistic, not symbolic. An exactly opposite method of treatment was exemplified in Mr. Watt's "Judgment of Paris," exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1887. Paris was left out, for does not every lover have the same choice to make for himself? and the goddesses were soft visionary forms of purely ideal beauty (cf. Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. viii. § 7).