After Pierre Lepautre, 19th century.

French school, 19th century.
After PIERRE LEPAUTRE (1652-1716) and FRANÇOIS GIRARDON (1628-1715).
"Aeneas rescuing Anchises and Ascanius".
Patinated bronze.
With foundry stamp "Barbedienne".
Measurements: 67 x 30 x 27 cm.

This sculptural group is a high quality scale version of a marble group made between 1697 and 1716 by Pierre Lepautre from a wax sketch entrusted to him by François Girardon in 1696. Created during the artist's stay at the French Academy in Rome, from 1697, and transported to France in 1715 to decorate the garden of the Château de Marly, the original work is now in the Louvre.

It is a baroque representation of the episode narrated by Virgil in the Aeneid consisting of the rescue of Aeneas from his father Anchises and his young son Ascanius, when his hometown, Troy, was already a city in flames. According to Virgil, father and son arrived in Latium, where he would become king and the progenitor of the Roman people. The hero, armored and helmeted, carries his lifeless father on his back, followed by Ascanius, in a typically Baroque dynamic composition. Aeneas is depicted in an upright position, leaning on his left leg, stepping on a fragment of architecture symbolizing the destruction of Troy. He carries his father Anchises in his arms, the latter gazing skyward, dressed simply in a cloth around his waist, wearing a cap and holding the Palladium, the image of Pallas that would become the sacred emblem of the Romans. With his right hand extended behind Aeneas' back, Anchises holds the wrist of the young Ascanius, turned towards the city and desperately searching for his mother Creüse, daughter of Priam, who has disappeared. It is, thus, a piece full of narrative and drama.