The Goddess of Discord in the Garden of the Hesperides, from "lllustrated London News"

Henry Linton

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This wood engraving reproduces a painting of 1806 by J.M.W. Turner, now at Tate Britain. The Goddess of Discord has entered the Garden of the Hesperides (in Greek myth, the Hesperides were daughters of the Evening Star Herperus, and lived at the western edge of the world, guarding golden fruits that grant immortality). In this image, a nymph gives apples to a cloaked figure who will use their powers for ill (one is later given to Paris, who awards it to Aphrodite and precipitates the Trojan War). A guardian dragon lying on a distant cliff has failed to alert the nymphs to the danger.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art