PROPERTY FROM A SWISS PRIVATE COLLECTION

Height 25 ¼ in.; width 33 in.
64 cm.; 84 cm.

Provenance

Collection privée européenne

Catalogue note

This chandelier is identical to one formerly in the Louis Cartier and Barbara Piasecka Johnson collections, sold Sotheby's London, 5 July 2006, lot 4. Both are based on designs first published in c.1701-1703 in the Nouveau Livre d’Orfevrerie by Daniel Marot (fig,1, reproduced in H. Ottomeyer and P. Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, Vol. I, Munich 1986, p.50. fig. 1.6.1). The architect and designer Daniel Marot (1661–1752), a Paris-born Huguenot who was the nephew of the cabinetmaker Pierre Gole, emigrated to Holland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and entered the service of the Stadhouder William of Orange, later accompanying him to London when he became the King William III of England in 1688. He is widely credited with introducing the Louis XIV style in furniture, interiors and decorative arts into both Holland and England, though it is often pointed out that his ornamental repertory reflected French court taste at the time he left and would have been somewhat out of fashion in France by the time his work was published after 1700.

The original designs for gilt bronze chandeliers were based on models supplied in silver to the court of Louis XIV, primarily for use in the Galerie des Glaces at the recently constructed palace of Versailles, where they accompanied the magnificent suite of silver furniture that reflected the glories of the French monarch and was notoriously melted down after 1689. A pre-1678 design for a silver chandelier by the orfèvre du roi Claude Ballin (1615-1678) in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (fig.2) establishes the general form most silver and subsequently gilt bronze models would follow, with a flaming-finialed upper vase surrounded by scroll brackets headed by female masks and a facetted lower section with gently scrolling arms applied with acanthus leaves. By the end of Louis XIV's reign this type of chandelier had become a widely sought after form of lighting in wealthy households; the marchand-mercier Darnault, who established his business in 1715, specifically lists among other stock on his trade card 'Lustres a six, huits, & dix branches, de bronze cizele, dore d'or moulu, d'or en feuille, argente et en coleur d'or' ((illustrated in Carolyn Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets, London 1996, p.23).

Numerous workshops specialised in the production of gilt bronze chandeliers, including the cabinetmaker André-Charles Boulle (1648-1732), who as a privileged ébéniste du Roi with lodgings in the Louvre was free of guild restrictions limiting him to furniture manufacture; a 1720 description of his workshops noted that out of twenty-six workbenches, no fewer than six were reserved for the use of bronze specialists. One model securely attributed to Boulle and known as the lustre aux dauphins employs circular profile medallions similar to those on the Marot design and the present chandelier; surviving 18th-century examples are found in the Louvre (illustrated D. Alcouffe, A. Dion-Tenebaum, G. Mabille, Gilt bronzes in the Louvre, Dijon 2004, p. 30, no.5), the Abbaye de Chaalis, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Getty Museum (fig,3).

Boulle however was not the only supplier of gilt bronze chandeliers in early 18th century Paris, and another possible candidate for authorship is the court silversmith Nicolas Delauany (1646-1727) who like Boulle enjoyed royal protection with his workshop in the Louvre and was free to work in media other than silver. Profile medallions also appear frequently in Delaunay's work, first on a 1678 drawing by Delaunay of a lock designed for Queen Marie-Thérèse now in the Bibliothèque Nationale and most notably on an often copied pair of gilt bronze ewers of c.1700 with panther handles now in the Louvre (OA 10264-65; Alcouffe et al no,4), based on a single silver gilt model created in 1697 now in the Treasury of Poitiers Cathedral.