Das Urteil des Paris

Renoir painted this around 1913, in his seventies and badly crippled by rheumatoid arthritis. At his house in the south of France, near Nice, his fingers had curled shut, and assistants wedged the brush between them so he could keep working. Yet the subject he chose is warm and untroubled: the Trojan prince Paris handing a golden apple to the fairest of three goddesses, who stand nude in a glowing landscape. He had turned back to old myths late in life, and to full, ample figures painted in reds and roses. Around the same time he had a young sculptor, Richard Guino, work the same scene into relief under his direction, since his own hands no longer could.