A pair of Empire candlesticks

A fine pair of Empire gilt and patinated bronze candlesticks, each surmounted by an anthemion cast vase-shaped nozzle with gadrooned drip-pan above a tapering columnar stem headed by three Classical female heads each with coiled hair to resemble a veiled headdress tied beneath her chin, the stem terminating in three single lion paw feet on an anthemion cast spreading circular base

Paris, date circa 1810
Height 30 cm. each.

These elegant candlesticks can be compared to a number of other gilt and patinated bronze as well as silver candlesticks dating from about 1810. In particular they relate to a design for a candlestick in a trade catalogue of circa 1810, now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris which featured full caryatid heads below the nozzles, each figure wearing a very similar headdress as here but with the stem terminated by pairs of human as opposed to single lion paw feet. The present pair also compare to an executed model, again with human feet, full caryatid heads but of overall conforming design (respectively illustrated in Hans Ottomeyer and Peter Pröschel, „Vergoldete Bronzen“, 1986, p. 326, pls. 5.1.7 and 5.1.6).

Perhaps closer in design to the present examples is a pair of candlesticks by Claude Galle (1759-1815) in the Grand Trianon Versailles, which though lacking the female heads have a stem of the same shape on three very similar lion paw feet (illustrated in Ottomeyer and Pröschel, ibid. p. 327, pl. 5.1.8)