Bronze Representative Aeneas Carrying His Father Anchises Leaving Troy Lepautre And Girardon Barbedienne

Aeneas saving his father Anchises and his son Ascanius from the fire of Troy, by Pierre Lepautre (1660-1744), after a model by François Girardon (1628-1715) Bronze with medal patina.

H. 65 cm, L. 23 cm, D. 25 cm late 19th century Barbedienne founder, reduction stamp Collas this group in bronze with medal patina showing Aeneas, son of Venus and Anchises, armored and helmeted, leaving Troy in flames carrying his father followed by his young son Ascanius, constitutes a remarkable and dramatic composition of baroque obedience, influenced by Giambologna and Bernini, created by two of the greatest sculptors of the end of the reign of the Sun King, François Girardon and Pierre Lepautre . Taken from the Aeneid, an unfinished poem by Virgil, the group evokes the flight of Aeneas, at the moment when Troy fell into the hands of the Achaeans thanks to the famous ruse of Ulysses. Aeneas is represented in a rearing position, resting on his left leg, stepping over a fragment of architecture symbolizing the destruction of the city of Troy. He carries his father Anchises in his arms, the latter looking up to the sky, simply dressed in a drape around his waist, wearing a cap, and holding the Palladium, the image of Pallas which will become the sacred emblem of the Romans. With his right hand stretched behind Aeneas's back, Anchises holds the wrist of young Ascanius, turned towards the city and desperately searching with his eyes for his mother Créüse, daughter of Priam, who has disappeared. The group rests on a foliage mound with a square and slightly domed section. It is a reduction of the original in white marble made between 1697 and 1716 by Pierre Lepautre based on a wax sketch entrusted to him by François Girardon in 1696. Executed during the artist's stay at the Académie de France in Rome from 1697, transported to France in 1715 to adorn the garden of the Château de Marly, the work now kept at the Louvre Museum, signed P. LE-PAUTRE FECIT, 1716, was completed with the help of Jacques Bousseau. A terracotta model in reduction of the original marble work is now kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In the 18th century, Lepautre himself had kept a copy in his workshop and Lalive de Jully, the famous introducer of Louis XV's ambassadors, also had another.

Note: reprint of the original sculpture kept at the Louvre Museum, inv. MR2028.

bronze in good house condition, medal patina.