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Lot Essay
These pedestals, each with composite bacchic pillar, thyrsus-finial and tripod-altar plinth, are composed in the Roman mid-l8th century antique fashion popularised by antiquarians: They relate to marble altars and candelabra featured in G. B.Piranesi's Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcophagi, tripodi, lucerne ed ornamenti antichi, Rome, 1778; and H. Moses, A Collection of Antique Vases, Altars, Paterae, Tripods, Candelabra, Sarcophagi etc., London, 1814 . Related candelabra were acquired around 1800 by the connoisseur Thomas Hope (d.1842) (see G.B.Waywell, The Lever and Hope Sculptures, Berlin, 1986, nos. 8 and ll).
A related tripod features in the 1794 watercolour of the Park Street collection of the connoisseur Charles Townley (K. Sloan ed., Enlightenment, 2003, fig. 162). Related antique fragments collected in Rome in the 1790s by the architect C.H. Tatham are now in the Sir John Soane's Museum, London (P. Thornton and H. Dory, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 1992, fig. 16).
A related tripod features in the 1794 watercolour of the Park Street collection of the connoisseur Charles Townley (K. Sloan ed., Enlightenment, 2003, fig. 162). Related antique fragments collected in Rome in the 1790s by the architect C.H. Tatham are now in the Sir John Soane's Museum, London (P. Thornton and H. Dory, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 1992, fig. 16).