MAILLET, Jacques-Léonard - b. 1823 Paris, d. 1895 Paris

French sculptor. His themes were of neoclassical and biblical inspiration; his public commissions were in large part for the programs of decorative architectural sculpture required by the grandiose public works programs characteristic of the Second Empire, which included commemorative portraits of French culture heroes. He also provided models for goldsmith’s work.

His earliest training had been in a drawing school in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, before he entered the École des Beaux-Arts at the age of seventeen. There he studied with Jean-Jacques Feuchère, winning in 1841 a second prize in the Prix de Rome. Then he studied under James Pradier, where he absorbed Pradier’s style, combining a neoclassical treatment with sentimental subject matter and a taste for genre.

In 1847 he received the premier grand prix de Rome on the given subject, Telemachus bringing back to Phalantes the ashes of Hippias and spent four years as a ‘pensionnaire’ at the French Academy in Rome, which was the entry to every public career in sculpture in nineteenth-century France.

Agrippina Carrying the Ashes of Germanicus

Germanicus, the adopted son of the Roman Emperor, Tiberius, was the father of Caligula, and the grandfather of Nero. He died at Antioch, victim of either poison or magic. His devoted widow, Agrippina, brought his ashes back to Rome in an urn.

This composition was exhibited at the Salon of 1861 in Paris.