Live Auction 7864500 Years: Decorative Arts Europe
A CHINOISERIE ORMOLU, GILT AND POLYCHROME-DECORATED TWENTY-FOUR LIGHT CHANDELIER
Lot 150 THE PROPERTY OF A BELGIAN NOBLEMAN

A CHINOISERIE ORMOLU, GILT AND POLYCHROME-DECORATED TWENTY-FOUR LIGHT CHANDELIER

MID-19TH CENTURY, THE CHINESE NODDING HEAD FIGURES AND BRANCHES ASSOCIATED

Closed8 July 2010

Price Realised

GBP 133,250

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A CHINOISERIE ORMOLU, GILT AND POLYCHROME-DECORATED TWENTY-FOUR LIGHT CHANDELIER
MID-19TH CENTURY, THE CHINESE NODDING HEAD FIGURES AND BRANCHES ASSOCIATED
With four red and blue-painted nodding head Chinaman figures with finely detailed faces, holding in each arm an S-shaped branch and seated on a tassled cushion, the concave-sided octagonal platform with painted frieze and pierced trellis decoration, the tapering body with japanned panels, above a pinecone finial bosses, supported by four fretwork chains issuing from an octagonal corona, the chains re-supported
53 in. (135 cm.) high; 38 in. (97 cm.) diameter

Specialist note

While the charming nodding head figures of pagods on this striking chandelier are undoubtedly of Chinese manufacture the polychrome painted body of the chandelier relates it to north Italian works. The Chinoiserie style was of course hugely fashionable again and again throughout the 18th and 19th century and not only rooms in fashionable houses were decorated in this style but entire palaces built. A related Italian chandelier of similarly impressive proportions and with gilt dragons and seated chinamen holding branches, was executed by Luigi Sani and Lorenzo Ristori for the Salotto Cinese of Palazzo Pitti in Florence, circa 1842. See A.M. Massinelli, Il Mobile Toscano, Milano, 1993, p. 202, plate CXII.