Judgment of Paris (c. 1505): Art, History and Details

Judgment of Paris (c. 1505) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Giovanni Paolo Fonduli (Italian).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Fonduli's relief depicts the ancient tale of the judgment of Paris, a mythological beauty contest for three Greek goddesses judged by the Trojan prince Paris. He holds an apple in his hand while Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena stand before him. Aphrodite extends a hand, signifying her attainment of the apple, and Athena holds the flaming head of a beast in the air, suggesting the imminent conflict of the Trojan War. In some versions of the story, only Aphrodite appears naked before Paris, but in Fonduli's work, Hera and Athena are completely nude, while Aphrodite ineffectually holds light drapery to shield her lower body. Fonduli blurs the identity of the three goddesses, showing that there is little difference in their respective beauty.

Object facts

• Title: Judgment of Paris
• Date: c. 1505
• Creator attribution: Giovanni Paolo Fonduli (Italian)
• Culture: Italy, Padua, early 16th century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Diameter: 5.4 cm (2 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Sculpture
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1984.54

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1984.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, no. 2 (April 1985): 163–207.
• Winter, Patrick M. de. “Recent Accessions of Italian Renaissance Decorative Arts, Part II.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 4 (April 1986): 142–182.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.