The Judgment of Paris

The Judgment of Paris, painted in 1620 and now at the Lowe Art Museum in Miami, depicts the mythological beauty contest in which the Trojan prince Paris must award a golden apple to the most beautiful goddess — Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite. His choice of Aphrodite, who bribed him with the promise of the most beautiful woman in the world (Helen of Sparta), triggered the Trojan War and shaped the entire subsequent course of classical mythology. The subject had been a staple of Western painting since the Renaissance, offering artists the legitimately classical excuse to depict three female nudes simultaneously. Jordaens's version, executed in the early years of his maturity, shows the three goddesses approaching Paris with a confidence that suggests Flemish models barely draped in mythological pretence. The Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami, with its strong collection of European Baroque painting, holds this work as a key example of Flemish mythological painting.

The three nude goddesses are arranged for maximum visual variety — different poses, different proportions — while Paris at one side provides the narrative anchor. Jordaens's flesh painting in 1620 already shows his mature confidence: warm, layered, substantial. The landscape behind is broadly handled, keeping attention on the figures. The golden apple is small and deliberately conspicuous, a compositional focus around which the entire narrative turns.