![]() As well as the golden glow of the apple and the fading light of the sun, he contrasts textures of silk, velvet, reflective glass (Minerva’s mirror with the foreboding reflection of Medusa’s head) but also the sheen of hair and skin. ![]() Born in 1874, Amy Lowell was deeply interested in and influenced by the Imagist movement and she received the Pulitzer Prize for her collection Whats OClock. Rubens also shows his skill at capturing different textures in paint. Yielding to no mans desire, Glowing with a saffron fire, Splendid, unassailed, the golden Apples of Hesperides This poem is in the public domain. The consequences of this action are foretold in the sky where Alecto (one of the three Furies) is seen blowing up into a jealous rage. The Garden of the Hesperides was the sacred garden or orchard of Hera that provided the Olympian Gods with the golden apples of immortality. Additionally they offered bribes to secure the apple – with Juno offering wealth and power, Minerva – wisdom and strength and Venus promising Paris the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, who was married to King Menelaus of Sparta – a gift which proved irresistible. The goddesses are all captured in various states of persuasive undress. Rubens sets this beauty contest in a rural, idyllic landscape and chooses to depict the moment when Paris appears to be offering the apple to a somewhat bashful looking Venus. Minerva, Juno and Venus all claim the apple so Jupiter tasks Paris to choose between them. Feeling snubbed by not receiving an invitation to an important wedding feast, Eris throws a golden apple inscribed ‘To the Fairest’ among the attendant goddesses. Peter Paul Rubens picks up the golden apple with his depiction of The Judgement of Paris based on the version of events by Roman poet Lucian. Ladon was the name of a monster in Greek dragon, the guardian of the Golden Apples in the Garden of the Hesperides. Music is suggested to also encircle the tree as one of the three Hesperides is depicted holding a lyre – something backed up by contemporary sources which claimed Leighton found inspiration in the following lines from Milton’s Comus: ![]() In his epic painting first exhibited in the Royal Academy’s 1892 Summer Exhibition, the Victorian artist Frederic Lord Leighton depicts the maidens resting languorously by the tree, the central figure entwined in the dragon’s coils. Some versions depict a fierce battle between Heracles and the dragon, while others depict Heracles being fed apples by the Hesperides. Artistic representations of how Heracles achieves this vary. Heracles is set the ultimate heroic challenge of stealing these life-giving apples as one of his Twelve Labours. The three daughters of Hesperus, the evening star, tend to the tree under the orders of the goddess Hera while the apples are guarded by an attendant dragon, Ladon. In ancient Greek mythology, the Garden of the Hesperides is where the tree of immortal golden apples grows.
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