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Lot Essay
These spectacular à l'antique candelabra, in the form of winged figures of Nike or Victory, are close in design to a drawing for similar candelabra by the architect Charles Percier as part of a commission to furnish Empress Josephine's bedroom at the Château de Saint Cloud (illustrated in M.L. Myers, French Architectural and Ornament Drawings of the Eighteenth Century, New York, 1991, pp. 157-160, cat. 98).
The model is particularly associated with the work of Pierre-Philippe Thomire, the most famous bronzier of the Empire period who supplied extensive amounts of bronzes d'ameublement for Napoleon's Palaces. Examples of this model by him are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and in a private collection, Bayreuth (ilustrated in H. Ottomeyer, P. Pröschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol. I, p. 328, figs. 5.2.2 and 5.2.4.
Percier and his collaborator Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine illustrated similar figures of winged Victory in their influential Recueil des Décorations Intérieures, first published in its entirety in 1812, for instance on a capital of an interior executed for the King of Spain, plate 62, or in the ceiling of the throne room in the Château de Saint Cloud, plate 47.
The model is particularly associated with the work of Pierre-Philippe Thomire, the most famous bronzier of the Empire period who supplied extensive amounts of bronzes d'ameublement for Napoleon's Palaces. Examples of this model by him are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and in a private collection, Bayreuth (ilustrated in H. Ottomeyer, P. Pröschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol. I, p. 328, figs. 5.2.2 and 5.2.4.
Percier and his collaborator Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine illustrated similar figures of winged Victory in their influential Recueil des Décorations Intérieures, first published in its entirety in 1812, for instance on a capital of an interior executed for the King of Spain, plate 62, or in the ceiling of the throne room in the Château de Saint Cloud, plate 47.