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A superb pair of Louis XVI gilt bronze three-light wall-lights in the style of Jean-Charles Delafosse, each with a flaming urn finial ornamented with oak-leaf swags and set upon a squared plinth above a ram’s head mask issuing three scrolling foliate-wrapped branches with guilloche and floral drip-pans and foliate and fluted nozzles, above a foliate-wrapped tapering shaft terminating in a foliate boss
Paris, date circa 1770
Height 43 cm, width 32 cm. each.
Literature: Hans Ottomeyer and Peter Pröschel, “Vergoldete Bronzen”, 1986, p. 186, pl. 3.9.2, illustrating an extremely similar wall-light in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
The model for the almost identical candelabra in the Louvre is known as à tête de bélier of which examples were supplied to the prince de Condé in 1779 by the marchand-mercier Quentin-Claude Pitoin. Another very similar or possibly identical pair was sold at Rudolph Lepke Berlin, 2nd April 1930, lots 464-467. Examples with only two branches are also known, of which there are several in the Residenz, Munich, while another pair were included in the Rothschild Collection, sold in London 1999.
The model is most commonly associated with the French decorative designer, engraver and architect Jean-Charles Delafosse (1734-89). Having initially trained for a while under a sculptor, by 1767 Delafosse styled himself an “architect and professor of design.” From the late 1760’s up until the mid 1780’s he created numerous designs for trophies, cartouches, furniture, vases and light fittings, many of which were engraved in two volumes entitled “Nouvelle Iconologie Historique ou Attributs Hiérogliphiques”, the first of which was published in 1786. It contained 110 plates of his designs for furniture, decorative arts and architectural ornaments in the Louis XVI style, most of which he also engraved himself. As the title implied, each design also had specific iconological or symbolic content. To this end his compilations of designs were marked by a somewhat mannered and geometrical Neo-classicism, lavish swags, heavy inverted scrolls and prominent Greek frets that involved innovative means in which to create spatial illusions and ambiguity.
Delafosse favoured antique forms that often incorporated flaming urns or vases as well as geometrical Neo-classical forms and inverted scrolls. While those elements are apparent here, others such as his preference for heavy scrolls and Greek frets are absent. The designs were subsequently engraved by various artists and predominantly issued through the print seller Chereau and played an essential role in spreading the taste for Neo-classicism and the goût antique throughout all of Europe.
Delafosse was appointed assistant professor of geometry and perspective at the Académie de Saint-Luc and was a member of the Académie de Bordeaux, where he exhibited a number of his drawings.
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