Juno, Minerva, and Venus Dispatching Mercury with the Apple of Discord

Maker James Thornhill (British, 1675 - 1734)

Collections

British Paintings

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Dateca. 1718

Mediumoil on canvas mounted on panel

Dimensionscanvas: 12 7/8 × 7 7/8 in. (32.7 × 20 cm.) frame: 17 × 12 3/4 × 2 1/4 in. (43.2 × 32.4 × 5.7 cm.)

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

Label TextIn this small oil sketch, Thornhill created a preliminary model of the ceiling painting that he carried out above an elaborately carved staircase at Charborough Park, Dorset. In developing paintings for the ceiling and walls of such staircases, Thornhill initially considered the unified effect of the scheme in three dimensions. He then perfected the design of each painting in numerous ink studies. Surviving drawings for other staircase schemes demonstrate his careful scrutiny of the interrelationship of the images, as well as their function within the complex architectural space. Oil sketches such as the Huntington's allowed Thornhill to test out the color scheme in which he intended to execute his design, and he probably presented them to his patrons for final approval before commencing work on a grander scale.
In terms of design, Thornhill made minimal modifications in translating this oil sketch to the ceiling at Charborough, merely expanding the breadth of the composition and introducing additional peripheral figures. In terms of style, however, the free manner of the oil sketch possesses a robust vitality that is rarely sustained in Thornhill's monumental paintings, in which sheer laboriousness often produced an appearance of stiffness. Here, the fresh, energetic manner in which the paint has been applied (for example, in the billowing capes of Mercury and Minerva), together with the confident figure drawing and bold handling of tone, light, and shadow demonstrate the bravura manner of which Thornhill was capable.
The staircase at Charborough Park was the first of several decorative schemes that Thornhill carried out in his native county of Dorset. The house had been built for the Parliamentarian Sir Walter Erle (1596-1665) sometime prior to 1661, and in 1718 his grandson, General Thomas Erle (d.1720), added a grand staircase hall to the center of the south front. During an illustrious military career, General Erle had distinguished himself for gallantry on the battlefields of Ireland and Flanders, and he was appointed commander-in-chief on Queen Anne's accession in 1702. Ill health ended his career in 1709, and he died in 1720, without leaving a male heir. The work he initiated at Charborough two years prior to his death was probably intended as a memorial and legacy, leaving an enduring mark on his ancestral home. His selection of Thornhill attests to the level of the general's ambition, for the painter was then at the height of his career. Already in 1718 Thornhill had essentially completed the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral and begun painting the upper hall at Greenwich Hospital. Also in 1718 he was appointed history painter in ordinary to the king, and the following year his preeminence was recognized with a knighthood.
The subject Thornhill selected for the staircase ceiling at Charborough was Mercury's descent to earth with the golden Apple of Discord, which mortal judge Paris was to bestow on the fairest of three goddesses, Juno, Minerva, or Venus. Seated in the clouds above Mercury, the goddesses are shown disputing their respective merits. Verses celebrating Thornhill's Charborough paintings, written in 1718 by the poet Christopher Pitt (1699-1748), pay tribute to the painter's energetic conception: "Hermes [i.e., Mercury] dispatch'd from the bright council flies,/ And cleaves with all his wings the liquid skies,/ In many a whirl and rapid circle driven/ So swift, he seems at once in earth and heaven./ Oh! with what energy! what noble force/ Of strongest colours you describe his course!" Thornhill's early ideas for the composition are documented by a drawing, which the artist inscribed The 3 Goddesses contending for ye Golden Apple. In the oil sketch, Thornhill broke up the blocky, four-square grouping of the drawing, linking the principal figures more gracefully along a snaking, sinuous line, with the descending figure of Mercury more radically separated from the three stationary goddesses.
Thornhill decorated the three walls of the staircase with subjects closely related to that of the ceiling: Mercury delivering the Apple of Discord to Paris; the Judgment of Paris, in which the Apple is awarded to Venus; and the Rape of Helen, in which Paris (through Venus's agency) absconds with the most beautiful woman on earth--an outrage that her husband and his countrymen avenged through the Trojan War. Thornhill's preliminary drawings for Charborough suggest that he initially contemplated a scene of the Birth of Venus instead of the Rape of Helen. That substitution would have placed greater emphasis on the triumph of Venus (or love), without the bellicose undertones that are introduced by the Rape (cause and precursor of Troy's archetypal war). Grisaille paintings along the base of the staircase wall, which combine putti and armor trophies, reinforce the intertwining of martial and amorous themes in the subjects that Thornhill carried out above. The melding of love and war that he developed in this staircase scheme provided a singularly appropriate ornament for the domestic residence of a retired war hero.

Status

Not on view

Object number78.14