Ganymede Pouring Nectar for Jupiter Transformed into an Eagle
Pierre Julien (1731-1804) · Eighteenth century
A slender youth tips a jug so that its stream falls into the cup he holds out to a great eagle at his feet. He is Ganymede, the Trojan prince whom Jupiter, in the form of an eagle, carried off to Olympus to be the cupbearer of the gods. Pierre Julien chose the tender moment of service rather than the violence of the abduction: the boy bends attentively over the bird, drapery slipping from his shoulder, and the eagle's feathers are carved with astonishing softness. The composition is quiet and vertical, a neoclassical calm after the turbulence of the earlier reception pieces in this room.
The subject caused Julien a humiliation. He presented a Ganymede to the Royal Academy in 1776 as a trial piece and it was refused; he was received only three years later with a different work. This marble is a replica commissioned by the magistrate Antoine-Louis-Hyacinthe Hocquart for his chateau at Montfermeil, where it was seized at the Revolution in 1793. It passed through Versailles and the chateau of Saint-Cloud and entered the Louvre between 1846 and 1855.
Did You Know? The Academy rejected the first version of this subject in 1776, and yet a private collector liked it enough to order this replica.
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