This ormolu-enriched bronze mantel-piece garniture, designed in the Louis XVI 'Etruscan' or 'Pompeian' manner of the 1780s, features a lightly clad youth and his companion studying by the light of Roman lamps, which also serve as their couches. The plinth-supported oil-lamps with reed-gadrooned bowls have flame-wrapped nozzles, and while the youthful Philosopher writes on a tablet his female companion studies a book. A related scroll-handled lamp surmounted by a female figure, perhaps emblematic of History, features as the garniture of a mantelpiece in a drawing in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (see: J. Bourne and V. Brett, Lighting in the Domestic Interior, London, 1991, fig. 530). Models for Le Philosophe and La Lectrice and L'Etude in porcelain were first executed for a Lampe antique in 1780 by Louis-Simon Boizot (d. 1809), who was Sculpteur du Roi. He succeeded Etienne Falconet as Director of Sculpture at the Royal Sèvres Manufactory in 1773 and later worked in conjunction with the celebrated bronzier Pierre-Philippe Thomire (d. 1843) (see: E. Bourgeois, Le Biscuit de Sèvres, Paris, 1909, vol. II, p. 22). They also featured on a clock-model, known as L'Etude et la Philosophie for which the bronzier François Rémond (maître in 1774) produced a design commissioned by the marchand-mercier Dominique Daguerre (see: C. Jagger, Royal Clocks, London, 1983, p. 155). A version of the 'Lectrice' bronze lamp, while in the collection of Czar Alexander I (d. 1825), featured in a portrait by Jean-Laurent Monier (see H. Ottomeyer, P. Pröschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol. I fig. 4.17.4); and is perhaps the version, which together with a bronze 'Philosophe' is now displayed at Gatchina Palace near St. Petersburg. The latter may have been acquired by Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, later Emperor Paul I (d. 1801), whose bust was executed by Boizot during his visit to Paris in 1782