Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, O.M., R.A.

Commissioned by Messrs. Gambart, London, 1866
N. G. Clayton, by 1882
G. H. Glenton (by descent and sold: Christie's, London, February 7, 1958, lot 88)
R. H. Muir (acquired at the above sale and sold: November 10, 1972, lot 188, illustrated)
M. Kieran (acquired at the above sale and sold: Bonham's March 29, 1973)
I. A. McInness, Eastbourne
Acquired by the present owner in 2003  

Brussels, Exposition Générale des Beaux-Arts, 1866, no. 11
Paris, Exposition Universelle, 1867, no. 11
Munich Academy, 1868
London, Grosvenor Gallery, The Works of L. Alma-Tadema, Winter Exposition, 1882, no. 17
Kurt Schon Gallery, New Orleans, 1974
Provo, Utah, Brigham Young University, February 1979, no. 42  

E. Gosse, Illustrated Biographies of Modern Artists, 1884, p. 84
C. Vosmaer, Alma-Tadema Catalogue Raisonné, unpublished manuscript, c. 1885, no. 46
Helen Zimmern, Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, R.A., London, 1902, p. 10
Percy Cross Standing, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema O.M., R.A., London, 1905, p. 46
Rudolph Dircks, "The later Works of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema O.M., R.A., R.W.S.", The Art Journal, December 1910, p. 25
Vern Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 1990, no. 76, pp. 139, 303, illustrated

Painted in July 1866, this work is Opus XXXVII.

The present work is one of the last in a series of solemn, classical subjects to be painted by Alma-Tadema.  While certainly his new art dealer, Ernest Gambart, encouraged him to paint "easier" pictures, with an eye towards fulfilling the decoration aims of his Victorian clients, Tadema's impressive range of emotional and pictorial expressiveness is poignantly displayed in this panel.

Aggripina (circa 14 BC - 33 AD), granddaughter of Augustus and daughter of Julia, reclines upon a couch in a sunken columbarium. She mourns her late husband, Germanicus (15 BC - 19 AD), a promising general of the Imperial family and the adopted son of Tiberius. She honors his memory by placing a fresh laurel on his golden casket, taken from the cinerarium.

The Latin inscription in the background reads 'Aggripina, the widow of Germanicus'. Her troubled expression signals her suspicion that Emperor Tiberius had poisoned her beloved husband.  Because of her accusations, she was exiled in AD 29 to the isle of Pandeteria (now called Ventotene, on the west coast of Italy) and she died there four years later of starvation. However, Aggripina's familial influence did not end with her husband's or with her own untimely death: her daughter, Aggripina Minor, was the mother of the future Emperor, Nero.