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Lot Essay
This chandelier, embellished with Roman acanthus in the Louis XIV antique manner, has a reed-wrapped and thyrsus-finialed baluster of krater-vase form and is wreathed by laurel-festooned 'Emperor' medallions alternating with candlebranch-trusses, embellished with deity heads of the sun-god Apollo and the hero Hercules. Its dome, displaying Venus-shell badges in a fretted ribbon guilloche, is surmounted by a vase-cassolette embellished with a flowered ribbon-guilloche and fretted trellis.
A Louis XIV pattern for a similar urn-capped chandelier, with Ionic scrolled branches, was published in 1710 in The Hague by Daniel Marot (d. 1752) in his Nouveau Livre d'Orfèvrerie Inventé par Marot (H. Ottomeyer, P. Pröschel, et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol. I, p. 50, fig. 1.6.1.). A very closely related eight-branch chandelier, now attributed to André-Charles Boulle, and decorated with masks and medallions, as well as herm figures at the top, was listed in the 1717 inventory of Mme Romanet, whose husband had served as 'secretary' to Louis XIV. This chandelier, or another of the same pattern, was formerly in the collection of M. and Mme Louis Cartier, sold Sotheby's Monaco, 25-27 November 1979, lot 193, and again anonymously Christie's New York, 21 May 1996, lot 316.
A further chandelier of this pattern, with variations, formerly in the collection of the Comte d'Armaillé was sold Galerie Sedemeyer, Paris, 5 - 6 June 1890, lot 11, and is illustrated in the Grog-Carven collection in Revue du Louvre, 1974, p. 128. Another, similar, was sold from the collection of René Fribourg, Sotheby's London, 28 June 1963, lot 151.
A Louis XIV pattern for a similar urn-capped chandelier, with Ionic scrolled branches, was published in 1710 in The Hague by Daniel Marot (d. 1752) in his Nouveau Livre d'Orfèvrerie Inventé par Marot (H. Ottomeyer, P. Pröschel, et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol. I, p. 50, fig. 1.6.1.). A very closely related eight-branch chandelier, now attributed to André-Charles Boulle, and decorated with masks and medallions, as well as herm figures at the top, was listed in the 1717 inventory of Mme Romanet, whose husband had served as 'secretary' to Louis XIV. This chandelier, or another of the same pattern, was formerly in the collection of M. and Mme Louis Cartier, sold Sotheby's Monaco, 25-27 November 1979, lot 193, and again anonymously Christie's New York, 21 May 1996, lot 316.
A further chandelier of this pattern, with variations, formerly in the collection of the Comte d'Armaillé was sold Galerie Sedemeyer, Paris, 5 - 6 June 1890, lot 11, and is illustrated in the Grog-Carven collection in Revue du Louvre, 1974, p. 128. Another, similar, was sold from the collection of René Fribourg, Sotheby's London, 28 June 1963, lot 151.