Every Thursday, as part of my personal “enriched environment” initiative, I post a piece of art, usually from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which recently released online some 400,000 high-resolution images of its collection. All artwork will show a sun (or sunlight) somewhere.
I won’t name the piece or the artist, but instead invite you to study the art and post a comment addressing one or more of these questions:
- What is going on in this picture?
- What do you see that makes you say that?
- What more can you find?
If you have another idea, run with it.
Special Update! The New York Times website does this same exercise every Monday with a news photo that is uncaptioned and contains no text (click!). The Times asks viewers the same three questions:
- What is going on in this picture?
- What do you see that makes you say that?
- What more can you find?
However, at the end of the week, the Times posts the background information on the picture. So, I’ve decided to do the same. I’ll still post an unlabeled piece of art on Thursday. But return on Sunday (for the Sunny Sundays post!) and you’ll find an update on the artwork here.
Note: To embiggen the image, click on it!
The Judgment of Paris; he is sitting at left with Venus, Juno and Pallas Athena, a winged victory above; in the upper section the Sun in his chariot preceeded by Castor and Pollux on horseback; at lower right two river gods and a naiad above whom Jupiter, an eagle, Ganymede, Diana and another Goddess
Artist: Marcantonio Raimondi (Italian, Argini (?) ca. 1480–before 1534 Bologna (?))
Artist: After Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio or Santi) (Italian, Urbino 1483–1520 Rome)
Date: ca. 1510–20
Medium: Engraving
Description
A masterpiece of Renaissance printmaking, this work represents a high point in the collaboration between Raphael and Marcantonio. While Marcantonio sometimes worked from drawings created for other projects, in this case Raphael created the drawing for the sole purpose of having it engraved by Marcantonio. Drawings done, as Vasari tells us, ‘to please himself,’ gave Raphael a forum in which to explore the ancient motifs that so fascinated him, while the process of printing ensured that Raphael’s private endeavours could be known to a wide audience. The engraver’s controlled, systematic line, curving around the figures, gives them a great three-dimensional presence.
At the wedding of King Peleus of Thessaly and the sea goddess Thetis, Strife showed up uninvited and threw into the midst of the guests a golden apple inscribed ‘to the fairest.’ To put an end to the squabbling between Minerva (Athena), Venus (Aphrodite), and his wife Juno (the Greek Hera), Jupiter decreed that the handsomest man on earth, a Trojan prince raised as a shepherd, would be the judge. All of the goddesses bribed Paris, but Venus—promising him the most beautiful woman in the world as his bride—won the contest. Unfortunately, her candidate was already married, and Paris’ abduction of Helen from her Greek husband sparked the Trojan War.
I think that’s supposed to be the sun up in the sky, the chariot with four horses coming through the ring. But based on the shadows everyone is casting, even the man in the chariot, the sun is off to the left. All in all this is a busy picture with lots of what I imagine to be greek gods.
The women have such muscular bodies they could pass for men almost. In additionally, I don’t see a chariot in the sky where the man is riding the four horses through the big ring.
Are any of the people in this drawing supposed to be human? Or are all of them Greek gods and goddesses and demi-gods? And do the animals in the picture mean anything?
Fantastic drawing. It’s strange that the woman in the very center of the scene has her back to us. What does that mean in terms of the viewer’s perspective?
I think it’s strange that everyone’s naked and that the main person in the center of the picture, the woman holding up the cloth, has her back to us. I’ve never seen that before.
It’s intriguing that the upper left corner is very busy with details of the forest, and the upper right corner is busy with details of human-like figures up in the sky. The upper left corner is dark, the upper right corner is light.
Whoever drew this certainly knows how to render the naked human body in a delicious manner.
I assume this is a coming together of many Greek gods and goddesses. For example, I recognize Zeus in the upper right holding the bolts of lightning, and possibly Jupiter in the lower left. I wonder if any of the animals in the picture have significance. There’s a lot to look at here and probably a lot of stories.