This sculpture of Paris is located in the Louvre's Roman Antiquities Room.
The Louvre's website for this work (
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"The Paris of the Lansdowne collection belongs to a lineage of large replica of an original Roman born famous. The Trojan hero is represented as a very young man wearing the Phrygian cap. The youthful appearance of the figure, the crossing of the legs and the integration of support for the membership to invite to recognize an echo of a creation of the fourth century BC. BC, probably a bronze by sculptor Euphranor the painter and mid-century.
The statue Lansdowne: a portrait of Paris
The excavations conducted by Gavin Hamilton in the villa of Emperor Hadrian in Tivoli have delivered in 1769 forty marble sculptures, figures from Greek mythology and Egyptian deities, among which was the figure of Adonis. The statue, which probably participated in the prestigious setting of this house, entered the Louvre in 1988 after having successively belonged to Lord Lansdowne and R. Peyrefitte. The young man is shown naked, casually leaning on a tree trunk, his left hand on hip. He wears the Phrygian cap usually worn by the characters of Oriental origin. Very early it was interpreted as such: some have recognized Ganymede, because relatives of the work with some Roman copies where the handsome young lover of Zeus is associated with an eagle, but others have preferred to see an effigy of Paris, prince of Troy and legendary shepherd. This identification is still prevalent.
Classical aesthetics of the fourth century BC. AD
The type of statue is known by several aftershocks from the imperial era that echo an original work created at the end of the classical period. The appearance of the young man, his attitude and the construction of the composition reflect the aesthetic productions of the fourth century BC. AD and demonstrate research sculptors of this century. The Trojan hero seems juvenile and fragile: the silhouette waving, slender, almost feminine, and still a teenager, barely marked by the accents of the muscles that are cleverly blurred. The crossing of the legs in front of one another accuses hanchement body. The artist goes beyond the contrapposto and developed by Polykleitos a century earlier and reached a point of imbalance of the figure makes the necessary support. The tree plays a dual role as picturesque and naturalistic element, intended to suggest space within which the character, and forestay.
An echo of Pâris bronze Euphranor
Authorship of the original is generally attributed to Euphranor, Greek painter and sculptor, active in Athens in the mid-fourth century BC. CE Pliny the Elder (Natural History, XXXIV, 77-78 and 128) tells us indeed qu'Euphranor achieved a Paris-Alexander greatly admired; the work was perhaps bronze. About the style of his figures, Pliny mentions a gun too small and too large heads relative to body. The statue of the Lansdowne collection seems to correspond to that testimony. The career of the sculptor is now better known thanks to the discovery of one or even several, of his creations: the Apollo Patroos marble of the Athenian Agora and the bronze Piraeus Athena. However, neither the one nor the other can not really be compared to Paris' reproduced by the marble Lansdowne to ensure the allocation of the original Euphranor."
Wikipedia (
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"...the son of Priam, king of Troy, appears in a number of Greek legends. Probably the best-known was his elopement with Helen, queen of Sparta, this being one of the immediate causes of the Trojan War. Later in the war, he fatally wounds Achilles in the heel with an arrow, as foretold by Achilles's mother, Thetis...
Homer's Iliad casts Paris as unskilled and cowardly. His brother Hector scolds and belittles him, though Paris readily admits his shortcomings in battle. His preference for bow and arrow emphasizes this, since he does not follow the code of honor shared by the other heroes. After slaying Hector and other heroes, Achilles dies by an arrow. By some accounts, the archer is Paris with Apollo's help; by others it is Apollo disguised as Paris.
Early in the epic, Paris and Menelaus duel in an attempt to end the war without further bloodshed. Menelaus easily defeats Paris, though Aphrodite spirits him away before Menelaus can finish the duel. Paris is returned to his bedchambers where Aphrodite forces Helen to be with him.
Paris's second attempt at combat is equally faced: rather than engage the Greek hero Diomedes in melee combat, Paris wounds Diomedes with an arrow through the foot.
Later in the war, after Philoctetes mortally wounds Paris, Helen makes her way to Mount Ida where she begs Paris's first wife, the nymph Oenone, to heal him. Still bitter that Paris had spurned her for his birthright in the city and then forgotten her for Helen, Oenone refuses. Helen returns alone to Troy, where Paris dies later the same day. In another version, Paris himself, in great pain, visits Oenone to plead for healing but is refused and dies on the mountainside. When Oenone hears of his funeral, she runs to his funeral pyre and throws herself in its fire.
After Paris's death, his brother Deiphobus married Helen and was then murdered by Menelaus in the sack of Troy."