ATTRIBUTED TO JACQUES CAFFIERI, CIRCA 1745-49

Designed in the picturesque Louis XV style popularised by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier and Nicolas Pineau, this superb pair of wall-lights can be attributed to the sculpteur, fondeur et ciseleur du roi Jacques Caffieri (1678-1755), probably with the help of his son (1714-1774). These lights are a perfect illustration of the desire of Louis XV's favourite daughter Louise-Elisabeth to reproduce as closely as possible the taste of Versailles at her court in Parma; to this end, she surrounded herself with the most talented artists and craftsmen of her time including Caffieri.
Our wall-lights have the C mark for Colorno and also the DC mark, which was applied to all the furnishings of the royal palaces of the Italian (and previously Savoy) royal family in the period after Italian unification. The royal family assumed ownership of Colorno at this time and moved the majority of the furnishings to the Palazzo del Quirinale in Rome.
Related wall-lights in the Palazzo del Quirinale are illustrated in A. González-Palacios, Il patrimonio artistico del Quirinale: gli arredi francesi, Rome, 1995, pp. 245-246.
With their foliate decoration, driptrays and curving form, the present wall-lights are related to the suite of four wall-lights most probably made by Caffieri and supplied to the Infanta for the palace of Colorno, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum (C. Bremer-David, Decorative Arts. An illustrated summary catalogue of the Collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, 1993, no. 1993, p. 103). Another pair of wall lights, from Colorno, is also closely related to the present lot. It is preserved in the Louvre (inv. OA10410-11) and illustrated in D. Alcouffe, A. Dion-Tenenbaum, G. Mabille, Les Bronzes d'ameublement du Louvre, Dijon, 2004, pp. 54-55.


Colorno: Louise-Elisabeth's Little Versailles
The eldest of the siblings with her twin sister Madame Henriette, Madame Première is reputed to have been the favourite daughter of Louis XV. In 1739 she married the Spanish Infante Philip and left Versailles for the court in Madrid with a heavy heart. Thanks to the War of the Austrian Succession (1741-1748), in which France and Spain were allied against Austria, Spain recovered the Duchy of Parma, Piacenza and Guastallia, which the young couple were given in late October 1749.
For almost twenty years, the Infanta was determined to raise Parma to the level of Versailles. Even today, the Colorno Palace is referred to as the "little Versailles of the Dukes of Parma". The Marquis d'Argenson tells us that when Madame Elisabeth arrived at the empty palace, she brought with her thirty-four carts loaded with furniture. During her stays in France (1748, 1753 and 1759), she forged links with Madame de Pompadour, whose great influence on French art inevitably had an impact on furnishings and life in Parma.
She brought many Parisian craftsmen to Colorno such as Michel Poncet, Marc Vibert and Nicolas Yon, or the upholsterers Petrus and Philippe Marnet; they were directed by directed by Boudard and Petitot. Parisian menuisiers also participated in the furnishing of the Italian ducal palace, including Avisse, Jean Boucault, Michel Cresson, Jean-Baptiste Tilliard and of course Nicolas-Quinibert Foliot for his sublime ceremonial furniture, one of the armchairs of which is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (inv. 07.225.57) and listed under number CR4865, while another is in the Hermitage and another in a private collection (Sotheby's sale, Monaco, 21 June 1987, lot 1100).
Although it is known that Madame Infante made numerous purchases directly from the marchand-mercier Lazare Duvaux, as well as from the ciseleur doreur sur métaux du roi Antoine Lelièvre, it was Caffieri who was most solicited for this commission.
As Peter Hughes reports in The Wallace Collection. Catalogue of Furniture III, London, 1996, pp. 1310-1315, some of the ormolu may, however, have been originally commissioned by Louis XV for his own use some years earlier and then given to his eldest daughter. This hypothesis is based in particular on the ormolu chandelier, also from Colorno, now in the Wallace Collection, since it is signed and dated CAFFIERI A PARIS 1751 and thus commissioned before their arrival in Paris.

Marie-Louise of Austria (1791-1847)
On the fall of the Empire, Napoleon’s wife Marie-Louise of Austria was granted the Duchy of Parma, where she settled on 9 April 1816 in the company of her lover, Count Adam Albert de Neipperg, whom she married on Napoleon's death in 1821. As mentioned above, Marie-Louise was granted not only the palaces but also their contents. Four children were born of this union, and Neipperg died in 1829. Judged as too lax a ruler, Marie-Louise lost the administration of the Austrian-ruled duchy when she married Count Charles-René de Bombelles in 1834. She died in December 1847.