The Judgement of Paris
There are certain scenes from the annals* of human history, myth and legend that have seen disproportionate representation by artists because they provide opportunities to practice painting nude women**. This is never more obviously true than in the case of the Judgement of Paris. The Judgement of Paris is the title of many, many paintings by many, many different artists simply because its subject is three gorgeous female gods trying their hardest to impress a young man with their beauty.
This competition for the golden apple*** quickly became a historical slideshow illustrating the fluctuations in what culture considers “sexy”. Some earlier artists rather conservatively portray only Aphrodite in the nude while showing the other two goddesses in awkward, ante-Romanic postures of allurement****. However, especially as history advanced beyond the Classical period, there was an unspoken agreement that it was now okay to portray The Judgement of Paris as a complete striptease. This interpretation of the event became normative and now examples of Hera, Athena and The Naughty One wearing as much as a retainer are properly rare.
Which is why this painting struck me as comment-worthy. Not only are the goddesses fully clad, they are far from the centerpiece of the work. Paris, who is usually portrayed as a conflicted, hapless shepherd boy who can’t stop gaping at the goddesses who have unaccountably shown up to flash him, is suddenly the primary focus. It is unto him that the artist has bestowed beauty and he is showing more skin than all the goddesses combined. In Rosi’s interpretation of the myth, Paris was the main attraction all along*****.
I tried researching Alessandro Rosi, the man behind this unusual painting, but found very little information about his personal life******. In fact it seems that very little is known about the man at all. The one thing we do know, thanks to some character named Orlandi writing in the mid-18th century, is how Rosi died. Apparently he was taking a walk when a column fell from a terrace and landed on him. Now, I’m not usually suspicious enough a person to be a conspiracy theorist, but there’s something just a little cartoonish about that death*******.
*I personally dislike this word so much that I feel obliged to apologize whenever I use it.
**Don’t shoot the messenger.
***It’s Greek mythology, so explaining the context and implications of this contest is the storytelling equivalent of picking at a loose thread on a knit sweater. Just look it up if you must know.
****The ancient Greek equivalents of the duck-face.
*****I guess we all interpret mythology through our own lens.
******Not that I was trying to discover anything specific about his personal life, you understand. It just happens that I couldn’t.
*******If I ever succumb to the influence of a fallen column, I hope that people will raise their eyebrows and murmur, “Sus. That’s… sus.”