Oliver Cornish
Sale Coordinator for Furniture, Sculpture, Rugs & Tapestries
Lot 47
Jacques-Léonard Maillet (French, 1823-1895): A patinated bronze of Agrippina carrying the ashes of Germanicus
3 December 2025, 13:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£1,000 - £1,500
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Helena Gumley
Head of Sale Carpets and Tapestries
Jacques-Léonard Maillet (French, 1823-1895): A patinated bronze of Agrippina carrying the ashes of Germanicus
The grieving widow clad in a draped robe, her veiled head and face bowed in sorrow, her right hand supporting a funerary urn of sarcophagus form inscribed GERMA/NAICVS, her left hand resting on the lid, raised on integral shallow square plinth base, signed to one side MAILLET, 40cm high, 13cm wide, 12cm deep
Footnotes
Provenance
Private Collection
Studying under Feuchère and Pradier, Maillet won the grand prix de Rome in 1847. After remaining in Rome for 5 years, he made his debut at the Salon of 1853, then worked for several Paris churches, the Louvre, the Hôtel de Ville, and the Opéra. Along with his classically-trained contemporaries, Maillet's oeuvre was concerned primarily with Biblical and Antique themes. In 1859, he exhibited the his major work 'Agrippine portant les cendres de Germamicus' in silver of which this edition probably dates to sometime in the 1860s. This composition was exhibited at the Salon of 1861 in Paris. A marble version of the work was subsequently placed in Monceau park in Paris in 1893.
Germanicus, the nephew and adopted son of Emperor Tiberius, was celebrated for his military campaigns in Germania and the eastern provinces, often accompanied by his wife Agrippina the Elder. His popularity with the army and the Roman people, however, aroused Tiberius's suspicion, and his death in 19 CE was widely believed to have resulted from poison, possibly motivated by imperial jealousy. Agrippina, renowned for her strength of character and loyalty to her family, was the granddaughter of Augustus and the mother of Emperor Caligula and Agrippina the Younger, who later married Emperor Claudius. Her defiance of Tiberius after Germanicus's death ultimately led to her exile and death by starvation.