The Judgment of Paris

In 1891, when Albert von Keller painted this in Munich, the Judgment of Paris was among the safest subjects an ambitious artist could pick. The old myth gave respectable cover for what juries and buyers actually wanted: three undressed goddesses in a landscape. Paris, a prince of Troy, has been handed a golden apple and told to give it to the fairest of three, Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, and each tries in turn to sway him. Aphrodite wins by promising him the most beautiful woman alive, the bargain that will carry Helen off from Sparta and start the Trojan War. Keller, a Munich society painter prized for his silks and his fashionable sitters, plays the scene for elegance rather than drama. A year later, in 1892, he helped found the Munich Secession, the breakaway aimed squarely at the salon taste this picture was made to flatter. It came to Basel through the museum's Birmann fund.