Pair Of Three-light Sconces With Ribboned Quivers Adorned With Laurel Branches And Berries, Louis XVI period, before 1785

Claude-Jean Pitoin

Exhibited by Steinitz Gallery

Material Chiselled and gilt bronze.

Dimensions 62 × 38 × 20.5 cm

Place of Creation Paris

Price Available upon inquiry

Status Vetted

About the Work

This pair of three-light sconces, with a dazzling quality of chiselling and gilding, was delivered before 1785, most likely during the year 1784, en suite with a second identical pair, by Claude-Jean Pitoin (1757-before 1806), gilder and silverer on metals to the King’s Garde-Meuble and supplier to the King from 1778 to 1786, to be used in the “Billiard Room and Library” of the apartment of Élisabeth of France, known as Madame Élisabeth, sister of Louis XVI, located at the southern far end of the Palace of Versailles, at the end of the South Wing. In the 19th century, they were part of the Rothschild collections in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, as evidenced by the presence on one of the two sconces of a small circular lead seal bearing the inscription H.ST.A/FRANKFURT/M [Hauptstaatsarchiv Frankfurt am Main/State Archives of Frankfurt am Main], and stamped on the reverse side with the German imperial eagle, a customs stamp used during the German Empire in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They have remained in the Rothschild collections through descent to the present day.

Each of these sconces is composed of a cylindrical, tapered shaft, in the shape of a quiver with a plain ground, crowned with a moulded band and enhanced with friezes of floriated acanthus with heart scrolls and pearls, the whole supporting a “bouquet” of arrow fletchings made of very finely chiselled feathers au naturel. A cavetto foot, adorned with a double row of lanceolate leaves surmounted by a laurel torus with moulded borders, from which falls a foliate seeded bud, terminates the shaft. Two console-shaped arms, tapered with reeded fluting, emerging from the rear of the quiver’s upper band, flank the latter and are bound at the front by an opulent ribbon bow with bretté (ribbed) surfaces, each of these arms punctuated by a circular acanthus-leaved bobèche with reeded flutes, underlined at the base by a fillet of pearls, and housing a short nozzle with a frieze adorned with a rosette-punched band. Extending well beyond the lower part of the quiver, a branch of seeded laurel, sculpted au naturel, wraps around it to form a third light arm in the centre, at a slightly lower level than the other two.

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Provenance

Delivered before 1785, most certainly during the year 1784, by Claude-Jean Pitoin (1757-before 1806), doreur-argenteur sur métaux du Garde-Meuble du Roi (gilder-silverer on metals to the King’s Garde-Meuble) et supplier to the King from 1778 to 1786, for use in the “Pièce du Billard et Bibliothèque” (Billiard room and Library) of the apartment of Élisabeth of France, known as Madame Élisabeth, sister of Louis XVI, in the Palace of Versailles, at the far end of the South Wing; Rothschild collection in Frankfurt am Main in the 19th and early 20th centuries; then, by descent, Rothschild collection to the present day.

Literature

SOURCES: Paris, Archives nationales, O1 3461, Inventaire général des Meubles du Château et Déhors de Versailles en 1785/Ier Volume, f. 565; and Paris, Archives nationales, O1 3463, Inventaire général des Meubles du Château et Déhors de Versailles en 1788/Ier Volume, f. 556.

LITERATURE: M. A. de Beauchesne, La vie de Madame Élisabeth, sœur de Louis XVI, Tome second, Paris, 1870, p. 523-524.