Paris Fresco

Paris FrescoA print of a Paris of Troy fresco in the tradition of the Roman wall paintings recovered from Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae. Paris the Trojan prince whose judgement of the goddesses triggered the abduction of Helen and the decade of war that followed is shown in his conventional attributes: Phrygian cap, shepherd's crook, the stillness of the herdsman prince before the storm. In Roman domestic painting Paris appeared most often in one of two

from Canova through Rodin

From the Renaissance onward the fragment has been a generative form for European sculpture rather than a diminished version of an ideal whole

built this" — and the line has misled casual viewers about the building's age for nineteen centuries

Homer describes him carrying a tower-shield "like a wall" — sakos ēüte purgos — and fighting Hector to a standstill in single combat

Eros with his shaft of love

The whole figure is carried in a single continuous line — winged helmet

Shakespeare turned it into a narrative poem

The Borghese Vase itself is a monumental Pentelic marble krater carved in Athens in the 1st century BC

Antique intaglio illustration of Jason and the Argonauts sailing through the Symplegades

Other Perseus plates in this series: Armed by the Nymphs and Gorgons' Lair

the abstracted pose — rendered in a few deliberate marks rather than the full tonal surface of the marble

stripped of illustration