Le Jugement de Pâris

Mercury turns toward the young shepherd Paris, who leans forward to hand the golden apple to Venus as a winged Cupid crowns her, while Hera and Athena stand by in the soft light of the woodland — the moment of the Judgement of Paris, the beauty contest whose promised prize of Helen would set the Trojan War in motion. Hans Rottenhammer, the Munich-born master of the small cabinet picture who trained in Rome and worked for years in Venice, painted this copper in 1597 at the height of his early fame; the crowning of Venus follows a design of Raphael known through Marcantonio Raimondi’s engraving, and the warm colour shows the contact with Veronese and Titian that marked all his later work. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris.