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Attributed to Pierre-Philippe Thomire (Master 1772)
Paris, c. 1787-88
Bronze
110 x 54 cm (each)
Inv. no. 18 A/B
These candelabra have upright shafts and two branches that are decorated with delicately chased and gilded foliage motifs. Honeysuckle and other wild flowers appear alongside roses, creating an extremely light composition that ends in pine-cone finials. The openwork branches support gilded bobeches that suggest wicker baskets.
Queen Marie Antoinette commissioned these candelabra in 1787-88 to decorate her bedroom, called “du treillage” at the Petit Trianon in Versailles. The entire décor was fundamentally a fine demonstration of how nature appeared in art and saved it from the sterility and rigidity of neo-classicism at a time when art was dominated by a 'return to the antique'. The natural and apparently spontaneous way in which the plants are arranged around the candelabra, almost hiding their straight lines and symmetry, make them the epitome of what is widely now called the “Marie Antoinette style”.
A selection of 18th century-pieces in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection
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