The Judgement of Paris

In the rotunda Sargent finished in 1921, one of the plaster reliefs shows the Three Graces holding up a lyre. The museum's guide of the time pointed out that Raphael had given the same three figures apples instead, a nod to the golden apple Paris awarded on Mount Ida, the prize that set Hera, Athena and Aphrodite against one another and led on to the Trojan War. Between 1922 and 1924, while designing the paintings for the grand staircase, Sargent took up that story directly. Here is the shepherd prince before the three goddesses, at the moment of choosing. Then he left the subject out of the scheme altogether. The design stayed in his studio, and in 1937 his sister Violet Ormond gave it to the museum.