Each with cartouche-shaped back depicting various pastoral scenes and capricci within a foliate-carved blossoming surround, fitted with a C-shaped candlearm
28 in. (71 cm.) high, 20 in. (50.8 cm.) wide

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Lot Essay

Lavish girandole wall lights called ventole were popular throughout the Italian peninsula in the eighteenth century for both decorative and lighting purposes. Polychrome-decorated ventole were particularly fashionable in the north, namely Venice and Piedmont. Gilding these lighting fixtures was common in both states, but whereas Venetian models often included clear and colored glass, which was often etched, to achieve a polychrome look, Piedmontese versions were rather painted, lacquered, or incorporated tôle-peinte. Large sets, sometimes as large as sets of forty, of such ventole were commissioned for the royal palaces of Stupinigi and in Turin throughout the second half of the 1700s. For a comparable set of three gilt and polychrome-decorated girandole wall lights, see V. Viale, Mostra del Barocco Piemontese, exh. cat., Vol. III, Turin, 1963, pl. 306, fig. b.