CIRCA 1820-40

This elegant pair of alabaster candelabra, with striking snake handles and realistic lily-form candle branches, exemplifies the taste for hard-stone objets montés. A pair of candelabra of this model with an alabaster body is recorded in 1781 in the sale of the collection of the marquis Jean-Baptiste-François Thomas de Pange, lot 95: ‘deux vases d’albâtre moderne, ornés d’anses de serpents, entrelacés de cuivre couleur de bronze, garnis de gorges, piédouches à culots, & surmontés chacun d’une girandole à trois branches figurant des pieds de lys, le tout de bronze richement ciselé, & doré d’or moulu.’ In 1796, two pairs of the same model are listed in the sale of the collection of citoyen Gonteau, lots 40 and 41: ‘Deux vases en albâtre, à anses de serpent en bronze couleur antique, ils sont garnis de piédouche, socle & gorges, & portent des branches de lys, formant girandoles à trois branches en bronze doré; hauteur totale 40 pouces… Deux autres pareilles, de formes & de grandeur’. For an example of a pair with Sèvres bleu nouveau porcelain, see P. Kjellberg, Objets Montés, Paris, 2000, p. 168. A similar porcelain example, without the fruiting garland, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Jones Collection 982A-1882, see H. Ottomeyer, P. Proschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol. I, p. 259, fig. 4.7.12. This late eighteenth century model continued to be much admired during the 1800s and it was first revived during the Bourbon Restauration when the present lot was manufactured. Having alabaster bodies, these candelabra are particularly faithful recreations of eighteenth-century models.