EARLY 19TH CENTURY

This pair of Empire ormolu and patinated bronze candelabra is virtually identical to a pair cast completely in gilt-bronze situated in a bedroom designed in 1805 by one of the founders of the Russian Empire style, Andrey Voronikhin (d.1814) in the Pavlovsk Palace, St. Petersburg (illustrated in Pavlovsk, The Palace and the Park, Léningrad, 1976, no. 218). While the bronzier cannot be conclusively identified, in circa 1809 Voronikhin incorporated the figure of an Egyptian woman in his design for a coupe of granite and bronze intended for the anteroom of Maria Feodorovna's private apartments at Pavlovsk (Ed. P. Hunter-Stiebel, Stroganoff, The Palace and Collections of a Russian Noble Family, New York, 2000, fig. 18a). Furthermore, the use of eccentric decorative elements in the present example, such as the squirrel on a chariot with a harnessed butterfly, or similarly the bird combined with a bee or wasp, are found on Russian decorative art and furniture of this period, including ormolu mounts on a Russian commode depicting Apollo in a chariot coupled with butterflies, also in the Pavlovsk Palace (A. Kuchumov, Household Interior Decoration in Nineteenth-century Russia, Leningrad, 1977, figs. 9 and 10). The present candelabra are correspondingly related to a pair circa 1807 designed by the Italian craftsman, Luigi Manfredini (d.1840), that represent blackamoors supporting a circlet decorated with signs of the zodiac (Christie's, Monaco, 21 June 1994, lot 455, FF288,600); the comparison between the Russian and Italian models suggesting that the respective bronzier was possibly inspired by Percier and Fontaine's Recueil de Décorations Intérieures, 1801.

An identical pair sold Sotheby's New York, 24 October 2003, lot 96 ($60,000). Another pair sold Sotheby's London, 14 June 2000, lot 86, (£48,800).