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Lot Essay
This 'picturesque' golden lantern evokes the spring season with its serpentined cage of palm-wrapped trusses wreathed in porcelain flowers and arched around a thyrsus-like foliate boss. It reflects the fashion at Louis XV's court for trompe l'oeil porcelain flowers, first introduced at Meissen in the 1740's, and perfected at the Vincennes factory. It embodies the amusing rococo concept of creating an eternal spring-time through the artificial means of porcelain flowers whose blooms will never fade.
Madame de Pompadour's favourite marchand mercier, Lazare Duvaux (d. 1758) particularly promoted the fashion for porcelain flowers, and in 1749 he delivered a similar chandelier to the fermier général Bouret de Villaumont. Another related chandelier is in the apartment of the Dauphine Marie-Josèphe at Versailles (see P. Lemoine, The Palace of Versailles, Paris, 1987, p. 104), while Lazare Duvaux also supplied wall-lights mounted with porcelain flowers to her in 1749. A further tole chandelier with porcelain flowers is illustrated in P. Verlet, Les Bronzes Dorées du XVIIIe Siècle, Paris, 1987, p. 26, fig. 13.
Madame de Pompadour's favourite marchand mercier, Lazare Duvaux (d. 1758) particularly promoted the fashion for porcelain flowers, and in 1749 he delivered a similar chandelier to the fermier général Bouret de Villaumont. Another related chandelier is in the apartment of the Dauphine Marie-Josèphe at Versailles (see P. Lemoine, The Palace of Versailles, Paris, 1987, p. 104), while Lazare Duvaux also supplied wall-lights mounted with porcelain flowers to her in 1749. A further tole chandelier with porcelain flowers is illustrated in P. Verlet, Les Bronzes Dorées du XVIIIe Siècle, Paris, 1987, p. 26, fig. 13.