French Bronze Sculpture "Amalthea and Jupiter's Goat" after Pierre Julien
Price upon request
A large 19th century bronze group titled: "Amalthea and Jupiter's Goat" after Pierre Julien (French 1731-1804)
The goddess portrayed as nude but for drapery held across her breasts and falling to her lap, seated on the back of the goat with her right foot raised to rest on a rock outcrop.
Signed: Julien
Circa 1880.
Height: 34" (86.3 cm)
Width: 21" (53.3 cm)
Depth: 15" (38.1 cm)
Pierre Julien's model of Amalthée et la chèvre de Jupiter was originally commissioned by Louis XVI for his newest acquisition, the Château de Rambouillet. Marie Antoinette was not fond of the castle and in an effort to make it more appealing to her, he had constructed in secret grotto "Laiterie de la Reine" (the Queen's dairy) with the statue of Amalthea commissioned as the primary focal point in 1786-87. In the words of art historian Michael Preston Worley, the model is "one of Julien's greatest achievements". The grand original statue was executed in marble and was eventually moved to the the Louvre in 1829 until its return to the original site in 1953. The goat-tending nymph Amalthea raised the infant-god Jupiter in a cave in the slopes of Cretan Mount Aigaion on a diet of milk and honey. In the Greek version of the myth, Jupiter (Zeus in the Greek myth) was hidden with Amalthea to save him from destruction at the hands of his father, Cronus, who devoured his newborn children at the moment of their birth.
