These candlesticks are conceived in the 'antique' manner popularised by C. Percier and P. Fontaine's Recueil de décorations intérieures, 1801, and recall the sun-god Apollo, whose chariot was drawn at night by swans. Their laureled vases stand on fountain-capped columns displaying 'water' bas-reliefs of Neptune's dolphin-twined tridents beneath a tripod of addorsed swans; while their bases, hung with festive water-deity masks, stand on palm-flowered plinths. A related star-girdled candlestick pattern incorporating the swan-supports features in S. Faniel et al., Le Dix-neuvième Siècle Franais, Paris, 1957, p. 133, fig. 5, and both patterns relate to candlesticks with owl-supports executed by the bronzier Claude Galle, such as those recorded in the 2ème salon de l'Impératrice at the Palais de Fontainebleau in 1807 (J.P. Samoyault, Pendules et Bronzes d'Ameublement entrés sous le Premier Empire, Paris, 1989, p. 176, no. 157).