The Judgment of Paris (c. 1510–20): Art, History and Details

The Judgment of Paris (c. 1510–20) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Hermes awakens the shepherd Paris to hand him the golden apple, which he is to present to the most beautiful of the three goddesses: Venus (foreground), Juno, or Minerva. The panel was produced by means of a compound of silver oxide, which, when applied to the glass and then fired in a kiln, turned into a translucent yellow stain. The culminating effects of different pigments and shadings required subsequent firings.

Object facts

• Title: The Judgment of Paris
• Date: c. 1510–20
• Culture: South Netherlands, 16th century
• Type: Glass
• Technique: silver-stained glass roundel
• Dimensions: Diameter: 22.3 cm (8 3/4 in.)
• Collection: MED - Gothic
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1985.148

A detail from the museum

The bright yellow tones in stained glass are made using a solution of silver oxide.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Michael Ward, Inc. In Form and Light: 400 Years of European Glass. New York: Michael Ward, Inc., 1985.
• Husband, Timothy and Madeline Harrison Caviness. Stained Glass before 1700 in American Collections: Silver-Stained Roundels and Unipartite Panels (Corpus Vitrearum Checklist IV. Washington, D.C., Hanover [N.H.]: National Gallery of Art; Distributed by the University Press of New England, 1991.
• Husband, Timothy, Ellen Konowitz, Zsuzsanna van Ruyven-Zeman, and Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.). The Luminous Image: Painted Glass Roundels in the Lowlands, 1480-1560. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995.

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.