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The Goddess of Discord choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of Hesperides

by JMW Turner

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This print is over 100 years old, and is made from a steel engraving that's even older (and currently in the National Gallery), by JMW Turner. Click on the thumb for a huger version. Although, even at that size, the amazing detail in this print is lost. Sorry about that.

(Click for big pic)

This is the descriptive text that accompanied the print:

The mythological story that has given a name to this picture, -- it was called in the Catalogue of the British Institutions, when exhibited there in 1806, 'The Goddess of Discord choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of Hesperides,' -- is thus related by writers: -- The goddess, to resent the slight she received by not being invited to the marriage-feast of Pelens and Thetis, produced one of the apples from the garden, and writing upon it, Detur pulchriori -- "Let it be given to the most beautiful" -- threw it among the guests assembled at the banquet. Juno, Minerva, and Venus, each claimed it as her right respectively, and a dispute arose between them. Jupiter, to settle the difference, and restore tranquility, decided that Paris, son of Piram, and a shepherd of Mount Ida, should be judge. The three claimants went to him, and he awarded the coveted prize to Venus, who had promised him for his wife the most beautiful of terrestrial women, Helen, Queen of Sparta -- a marriage from which resulted the Trojan war, the destruction of Troy, and all the numberless calamities that befel the contending nations, as sung by Homer and Virgil. In the foreground of Turner's picture, Discordia is seen receiving from the hand of one of the Hesperides the fruit which occasioned so much disaster.

And, no art exhibit is complete without a reviewer around to tear it to pieces. So, here you go. You're welcome.



This was donated to us by the infamous Clippergirl.


ODD# ivii(w)/BBC,14687149;61Cfn3171(K)3174 by The Barry Bittwister Cabal. All Rites Reversed.