A PAIR OF LATE LOUIS XVI FIVE-LIGHT GILT-BRONZE CANDELABRA

June 11 2009, 4:11pm

Paris. Circa 1785. The design of the present candelabra is of an austerity rare in gilded bronze in the Louis XVI period, which predates the distilled classical forms of the Directoire. A candelabrum almost identical to the present pair is illustrated in Hans Ottomeyer and Peter Pröschel’s book Vergoldete Bronzen. It is dated to 1785 and ascribed to the same maker as another tri-form candelabrum in the collection Musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris. Perhaps closest in spirit to the austere form of the present candelabra, however, is a pair of gilt-bronze tripod stands with marble dishes, which appears in the inventories of the Tuileries Palace and is now in the collection of the Musée du Louvre. With the same scrolling, reeded legs and closely comparable figuration of legs and base, these tripods share the radical aesthetic of the candelabra and seem likely to be by the same maker. The design of the present candelabra can be seen as forerunner of this purified classicism of the 1790s.