A very fine pair of French First Empire bronze and ormolu triform base candelabra, circa 1820. The paw foot bases on Sienna marble plinths, supporting reeded, patinated bronze columns finely cast. The seven swirling stylised acanthus leaf arms terminating in beautiful patinated bronze bobeches, with a matching central candleholder.
The Empire style is an early-nineteenth-century design movement in architecture, furniture, other decorative arts, and the visual arts, representing the second phase of Neoclassicism. It flourished between 1800 and 1815 during the Consulate and the First French Empire periods, although its life span lasted until the late 1820s. From France it spread into much of Europe and the United States.
The Empire style originated in and takes its name from the rule of the Emperor Napoleon I in the First French Empire, when it was intended to idealize Napoleon’s leadership and the French state. The previous fashionable style in France had been the Directoire style, a more austere and minimalist form of Neoclassicism that replaced the Louis XVI style, and the new Empire style brought a full return to ostentatious richness. The style corresponds somewhat to the Biedermeier style in the German-speaking lands, Federal style in the United States, and the Regency style in Britain.
