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Lot Essay
The present work portrays the love of Paris, the Trojan prince, and Oenone, daughter of Oceanus, which preceded his more famous marriage to Helen. Apollodorus (book III, 154-5) is the principal source for the story and he explains why the prince is depicted here as a herdsman. Before the birth of Paris, his mother Queen Hecabe dreamed that she bore a faggot from which wriggled many fiery serpents; she awoke in horror screaming that the city of Troy was ablaze. When Aescaus, the seer of Priam, King of Troy, decreed that both mother and child must be destroyed to avoid the ruin of the city, Priam commanded his chief herdsman Agelaus to murder the new-born. Unable to do so, Agelaus reared the boy as his own and it was while herding flocks that the prince met and fell in love with the fountain nymph Oenone. Dufresnoy depicts the moment when Paris indicates the words he has carved into the bark of a nearby tree to show his committment to their love. Although slightly effaced in the painting itself, the words recall Horace's poem in which the spurned Oenone writes a distraught letter to the absent Paris: 'If Paris rejects Oenone and still lives let the Xanthus flow back to its spring' (Heroides, V, translation by Harold Isbel, 1990, p. 41).
Although Paris abandoned Oenone for Helen, who was given to him as a reward from Venus for having judged her the most beautiful of all women, the ensuing Trojan War saw the two briefly reunited. When the Trojan prince was injured by the Greek archer Philoctetes, he was carried to Mount Ida to seek a cure from Oenone, who had been instructed in the art of medicine by Apollo. Still bitter, she refused to help, only to relent too late. Rushing to Troy, she found Paris already dead and, in a frenzy of grief, committed suicide.
A drawing, whose attribution to Jacques Blanchard is now challenged (see J. Thullier in the exhibition catalogue, Jacques Blanchard, 1600-1638, 6 March - 8 June 1998, p. 326, DR 35), is possibly related to the present picture; it is in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (see P. Bjurstrm, Drawings in Swedish Public Collections 2: French Drawings, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1976, no. 133).
Although Paris abandoned Oenone for Helen, who was given to him as a reward from Venus for having judged her the most beautiful of all women, the ensuing Trojan War saw the two briefly reunited. When the Trojan prince was injured by the Greek archer Philoctetes, he was carried to Mount Ida to seek a cure from Oenone, who had been instructed in the art of medicine by Apollo. Still bitter, she refused to help, only to relent too late. Rushing to Troy, she found Paris already dead and, in a frenzy of grief, committed suicide.
A drawing, whose attribution to Jacques Blanchard is now challenged (see J. Thullier in the exhibition catalogue, Jacques Blanchard, 1600-1638, 6 March - 8 June 1998, p. 326, DR 35), is possibly related to the present picture; it is in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (see P. Bjurstrm, Drawings in Swedish Public Collections 2: French Drawings, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1976, no. 133).