The Story of Helen and Paris

Antonio Castelletti
Frescos
1812

The ground floor of the Civic Museum at Palazzo della Penna features a vast cycle of paintings which were commissioned from the neoclassical Umbrian painter Antonio Castelletti by Baron Fabrizio Crispolti on the occasion of his marriage to Terdelinda Cesari. This cycle is a celebration of love and beauty portrayed through scenes from the Greek legend of Helen and Paris and was painted in 1812 in a neoclassical style, somewhat unusually for the piano nobile (Italian for noble or principal floor) of a noble dwelling, on the building’s ground floor.

The first room depicts Apollo che suona la lira (Apollo playing the lyre): a follower kneels at the feet of the god surrounded by dancing figures painted in the style of Greek vases; red on a black background. The second room features Giudizio di Paride (the Judgement of Paris) who is still holding the golden apple of discord, disputed by Eris, Athena and Aphrodite, and Mercury messenger of the gods. The third room, known as Salone di Apollo (Hall of Apollo), shows Paris’s deification: the protagonist is welcomed to Olympus by Apollo, in the presence of gods whose clothes symbolise the rapprochement between the seasons and the ages of man and thus the passage of time; in the centre Paris sits astride a horse in battledress. The fourth room holds a fascinating nocturnal scene portraying il Ratto di Elena (The Rape of Helen) and the fifth and final room is decorated with dancing ladies who, judging from the vine leaves, may be the muses or Menadi (Maenads) in allusion to Dionysus.