The Judgment of Paris

Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael

National Gallery of Art

Printed with black lines and delicate hatching, about twenty mostly nude, muscular people gather or fly across a shaded landscape in this horizontal engraving. The action is mostly focused on a man, Paris, who sits on a cloth-draped rock in front of three women in the left half of the composition. One woman across from and closest to Paris points off to our left as a peacock stands at her feet, its tail fanned open. The second woman and Paris exchange a round object as a nude, pudgy, winged boy pulls at her hip. A winged woman floating overhead is about to crown her with a ring of leaves. The third woman stands with her back to us and holds a piece of drapery up and to our right. A feathered helmet and shield lie at her feet. A dog sits next to Paris, and behind him, a man wearing a winged helmet and carrying a staff with intertwined snakes steps to our right. That man’s back is to us, and he looks over his right shoulder. Three more women to the left gather under a rocky outcropping, where two bulls or cows sit under some trees on the rocky hill in the distance, near the top left corner of the print. Three people recline in the lower right quadrant of the composition. Two of them are bearded, and the male genitals of one is visible. The third is clean-shaven and sits with their back to us while looking over one shoulder. This third person rests one hand on the opening of an urn. One of the bearded men holds a rudder and the other some reeds. In the sky above, a nude man flies a chariot led by four horses through a ring decorated with signs of the zodiac. Two people ride horses in front of him, and to the right, a bearded man, Zeus, holds up a furry-looking object, a lightning bolt. Three women, one with a crescent moon on her head, and an eagle stand or sit around him, and a man supports Zeus on his back. These flying people are surrounded by a bank of white clouds against a shadowy landscape. A river winds into the distance to the right, and the sky is deeply shaded. An inscription at the bottom center reads, “RAPH VRBI INVEN” above the conjoined letters M and A.