Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Eris.
The gallery
The Golden Apple of Discord
Jacob Jordaens, 1633
A Baroque oil painting of the wedding feast of Peleus and Thetis, the banquet of the gods into which the uninvited Eris hurls the golden apple inscribed 'to the fairest.' Her act ignites the rivalry among Hera, Athena and Aphrodite that leads to the Judgment of Paris and, ultimately, the Trojan War. The painting is in the Museo del Prado, Madrid.
The Goddess of Discord Choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of the Hesperides
J. M. W. Turner, 1806
Turner's early Tate canvas shows Eris — Discordia — as an older woman in a red skirt choosing among golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides. Before the wedding feast and the Judgment of Paris, the goddess of strife selects the fruit that will unmake Troy; the Romantic landscape makes discord a figure walking among mythic trees.
The Apple of Discord Thrown among the Gods
Livio Mehus, c. 1680–1691
The Flemish-Italian Baroque painter Livio Mehus stages Eris's insult as airborne drama: the golden apple flies into the assembly of the gods while Discord herself still hangs in the air. The canvas isolates the instant before Hera, Athena and Aphrodite claim the prize — strife as a projectile aimed at Olympus.
The Feast of Peleus
Edward Burne-Jones, 1872–1881
Burne-Jones's Pre-Raphaelite frieze of the wedding banquet places Eris at the far right, the uninvited guest whose golden apple is already among the gods. Where Jordaens fills the table with Baroque tumult, Burne-Jones turns the same Homeric hinge into a pale, ritual procession — Discord as the quiet edge of the feast that starts the Trojan War.