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| Sebald Beham Judgment of Paris 1546 engraving Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig |
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| Nicolaes Berchem Wooded Landscape with the Judgment of Paris before 1683 oil on panel Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Claude Lorrain Judgment of Paris ca. 1645-46 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Pierre Courteys Judgment of Paris before 1586 enamel on copper Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Anselm Feuerbach Judgment of Paris 1870 oil on canvas Hamburger Kunsthalle |
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| Frans Floris Judgment of Paris ca. 1548 oil on panel Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Judgment of Paris 17th century oil on canvas National Gallery, Athens |
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| Hendrik van Limborch Judgment of Paris 1731-32 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
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| Marcantonio Raimondi after Francesco Francia Judgment of Paris ca. 1504-1505 engraving Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden |
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| Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael Judgment of Paris ca. 1513-15 etching (Raphael design-drawing made specifically for this print) Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence |
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| Jean-Baptiste Regnault Judgment of Paris ca. 1812 oil on canvas Detroit Institute of Arts |
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| Alf Rolfsen Judgment of Paris 1913 oil on canvas Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø |
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| Jean-François de Troy Judgment of Solomon 1742 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon |
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| Anton Koberger (printer) Judgment of Solomon ca. 1479-83 hand-colored woodcut (Bible illustration) Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Georg Pencz Judgment of Solomon ca. 1531 engraving Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich |
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| Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur Judgment of Lucius Junius Brutus 1807 porcelain plaque (after painting by Heinrich Friedrich Füger) Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
For what is the character of Greek narration as we know it from Homer? Briefly, it is concerned not only with the "what" but also with the "how" of mythical events. Obviously this is not a very strict distinction. There can be no recital of events that does not include description of one kind or another, and nobody would claim that the Gilgamesh Epic or the Old Testament is devoid of vivid accounts. But maybe there is still a difference in the way Homer presents the incidents in front of Troy, the very thoughts of the heroes, or the reaction of Hector's small son, who takes fright from the plumes of his father's helmet. The poet is here an eyewitness. If he were asked how he could know so exactly how it actually happened, he would still invoke the authority of the Muse who told him all and enabled his inner eye to see across the chasm of time. We do not know whether painters and sculptors invoked a similar sanction when they first ventured into the realm of genuine mythological narrative. But one thing was bound to follow: in a narrative illustration, any distinction between the "what" and the "how" is impossible to maintain. The painting of the creation will not tell you, like the Holy Writ, only that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Whether he wants to or not, the pictorial artist has to include unintended information about the way God proceeded and, indeed, what God and the world "looked like" on the day of creation. The Christian Church has had to battle with this unwelcome concomitant of illustration since the very beginning of Biblical cycles. It may well have been the same difficulty that restrained earlier cultures from embarking on pictorial narrative of sacred themes. But where the poet was given the license to vary and embroider the myth and to dwell on the "how" in the recital of epic events, the way was open for the visual artist to do likewise.
It was only this freedom that would enable an artist to tackle a subject such as the judgment of Paris, for how could he render it without adding to the bare story? Not that he would have invented deliberately. On the contrary. Originally he probably did what we have known artists to do in such circumstances: he cast around for an existing schema that would lend itself to adaptation. It has been conjectured that the first illustrations of this story [painted on vases] are adaptations of a traditional cult image showing Hermes leading the three Graces.
– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960).