Exceptional pair of large candelabras with Bacchantes inspired by Etienne-Maurice Falconet

Exquisite pair of large candelabra with Bacchantes with a brown patina and gilt bronze finely engraved and gilded with matte gold and burnished gold.

This pair of candelabras illustrates the autumn harvest festival of Bacchus. On one candelabrum, the bacchante crowned with vines straddles an ancient wine krater whilst her companion wears a bacchic lion skin and holds a small thyrsus. On the other candelabrum, a nymph wears a ram’s skin. They each carry with raised arms a wreath of flowers with five arms of light branches decorated with corollas of lilies.

The piece rests on a round gilt bronze base with beaded grooves, inserted into a cylindrical white marble stand. It is adorned with garlands of falling vine leaves. It rests on a square base in white marble on a plinth decorated with a frieze of acanthus leaves.

French work in the Louis XVI style around 1870-1880. Napoleon III period.

The sculpture is reminiscent of models exhibited by sculptor Etienne-Maurice Falconet in the 1760s and would have been inspired by a group of plaster nymphs exhibited at the Salon of 1761. It is illustrated by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin in his copy of the exhibition catalogue. The attention to detail, treatment of the female form and textured surface, suppleness of the skin and complexity of the composition are characteristic of Falconet’s work and talent.