2ND HALF 20TH CENTURY, OF REGENCY STYLE

The bronze lamp, on alter-plinth with festooned bacchic masks of lions and rams, is conceived in the 19th Century antique manner, and its tazza-supporting Atlas caryatids derive from a Roman antiquity illustrated in G. B. Piranesi's Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcofagi..., Rome, 1778 (pls. 50-51). The latter engraving also featured in H. Moses, Collection of Vases, London, 1811, whose publication coincided with the manufacture of related Herculean 'Atlas' candelabra by B.L. Vuillamy for Carlton House, the London palace of George, Prince Regent, later King George IV (J. Harris et al, Buckingham Palace, London, 1986, p. 156). The antiquity also inspired the manufacture of a bronze and marble banqueting-table centrepiece at Francesco and Luigi Righetti's Rome bronze foundry and featured in an 1817 watercolour by Luigi Righetti illustrated in Alvar Gonzalez-Palacios, Il Tempio del Gusto, Milan, vol. II, 1984 (p. 124, fig. 267).