Paris’ dom

The Judgment of Paris was one of Cranach’s favourite subjects, and he treated it repeatedly for the court of Saxony, where he served as painter to the electors at Wittenberg. According to the myth Mercury asked the shepherd Paris to decide which of the three goddesses — Juno, Minerva or Venus — was the most beautiful, each of them offering him a bribe: power, victory in war, or the loveliest woman on earth. This panel of 1527 is a small and highly finished example from Cranach’s maturity, and the museum’s own account of it notices that the story is still unresolved on the picture surface — one of the goddesses turns her gaze on the beholder, who knows how the tale ends and is invited, as it were, to judge differently from Paris. The panel belongs to the old royal collection at Copenhagen, which the museum records as acquiring it in 1744. It is held in the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark).