A PAIR OF FRENCH ORMOLU, BRONZE AND VERDE ANTICO FIVE-LIGHT CANDELABRA

The Apollonian candelabra celebrate the sun and hunter deity's light-giving triumph, and were intended to accompany a clock as a chimney-piece garniture, where their light would be reflected by an overmantle. Grecian bronze figures of caryatid Nike (winged Victories) bear aloft golden trophies of arrow-quivers that are wreathed by candle-branches; and these comprise palm-flowered hunting-horns that recall horns-of-plenty and bear Arcadian Pan heads issuing from Roman foliage. Bas-reliefs of Sacrifices at Apollo's Delphic altar serve to label their altar-pedestals of green marble, whose stepped plinths are enwreathed by palm-flowered ribbon-guilloches. Such antique-fashioned candelabra were commissioned in the late l8th century by Parisian marchand-merciers such as Martin-Eloi Lignereux (d.1809) and executed by bronziers such as Antoine André Ravrio (d.1814) (elected maître fondeur in 1777). They were popularised by the publication of C. Percier and P. Fontaine's Recueil de Décorations Intérieures, 1801.