Willem van Mieris (Leiden 1662-1747)
Willem van Mieris (Leiden 1662-1747)

The Judgement of Paris

Details
Willem van Mieris (Leiden 1662-1747)
The Judgement of Paris
signed and dated 'W. Van Mieris· Fct. / Anno 1705·' (centre right)
oil on panel
21 ½ x 28 ¼ in. (54.3 x 71.6 cm.)
Provenance
Ménnéchet collection, Paris, 1840.
Claudius Tarral, Paris; his sale, Christie's, London, 11 June 1847, lot 34 (122 gns. to Nieuwenhuys).
M. Thévenin, Paris; his sale, Hôtel des Ventes Mobilières, Paris, 27 January 1851, lot 2.
Jules Cronier, Paris; his sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 11-12 March 1908, lot 90.
(Probably) Keith Ronald Mackenzie, Gillotts, Henley-on-Thames; Christie's, London, 4 June 1917, lot 134 (3 gns. to Lek).
Anonymous sale; Christie's, Paris, 1 April 2014, lot 25 (€85,500), when purchased by the present owner.
Literature
(Probably) J.B. Descamps, La vie des peintres flammands, allemands et hollandais, Paris, 1763, IV, p. 47.
J. Smith, Supplement to the Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters, London, 1842, p. 53, no. 1.
C. Blanc, Le trésor de la curiosité, II, Paris, 1858, p. 488.
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonne of the works of the most eminent Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, Stuttgart, 1928, X, p .127, no. 91.

Lot Essay

Willem van Mieris spent much of his career in Leiden working in the style of his father, Frans, with whom he had trained. Van Mieris’s work often comprised genre scenes and portraits, but with the prominence of pictures from history, mythology and literature in the hierarchy of genres, he also focused his attention on history painting and religious scenes.

This meticulously detailed work, dated 1705, is a beautiful example of Van Mieris’s mature style and his subtle mastery in painting idyllic mythological subjects. The picture shows the famous judgement of Paris, initially derived from Homer’s Iliad and a perennially popular subject for artists from the early 16th century onwards and, indeed, one which Van Mieris himself returned to a number of times. At the wedding feast of the Greek hero Peleus and his bride, the nymph Thetis, the snubbed goddess of Discord, Eris, had cast a golden apple among the guests as a ‘prize’ for the most beautiful, to which Juno, Minerva and Venus all laid vehement claim. Zeus, declining to judge, ruled that the Trojan prince, Paris, should decide the winner. Each goddess famously promised the prince a tantalising prize: Juno offered to make him king of Europe and Asia; Minerva to give him wisdom and military prowess; and Venus offered him the love of the world’s most beautiful woman, Helen of Sparta. Van Mieris depicts the critical moment of the tale when Paris, swayed by the temptations of Love, hands the Golden Apple to Venus while the other goddesses sit aggrieved nearby. The present composition was based on a drawing made by Van Mieris in 1692, which was recently sold in these rooms in 2007.

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