Pair of wall lights with one arm and male profiles

France, late 17th-early 18th century
Metal embossed, silver plates

Similar example:
Unknown, Pair of one arm wall lights with the coat of arms of Paul and Ursula Esterházy, mid- 17th century, Esterházy Privatstiftung, Forchtenstein castle, Augsbourg

Close example:
- Pierre Doublet, Pair of wall light plates, 1669-1670, Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. OA 9944)

The wall lights are composed of a polylobed shape plate from where starts, in the lower part, a light arm ended by a socket and a bobeche to receive a candle. Each plate presents a decoration of acanthus leaves, natural flowers, hammered volutes. An oval beaded framework of the same motif, underlined by natural thistle leaves, flanks the central plates. The latter presents two male busts, crowned with laurel and dressed in antique style, on a profile piedouche. These figures are unknown but can be compared to those that adorn the wall of lights with the arms of Paul and Ursula Estreházy preserved at the castle of Forchtenstein in Augsburg and dated back to the middle of the 17th century. In the lower part, there is a S-shaped foliated windings branch, supporting the decorated basin and the bobeche at the end.

The plates of lights
The plates of lights were attached to the wall. They were even sometimes hung directly on the tapestries as indicated in the representation of the room of Louis XIV at the château de Fontainebleau on the tapestry of the Audience of the legate (Tenture de l’Histoire du Roi), preserved in the musée du Louvre. The light of the flame of the candle supported by the arm of light reflected and shimmered on the plates left smooth as mirrors or worked, as we can see it here. In the 18th century, with the multiplication of mirrors in interiors that allowed the light to be reflected, the plates gave way to arms of light placed on either side of the glass overmantels.

Bibliography
Catherine Arminjon, Quand Versailles était meublé d’argent, Versailles, Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2007.
Michèle Bimbenet-Privat, Les Orfèvres et l'orfèvrerie de Paris au XVIIe siècle T. I., Paris, Commission des travaux historiques de la ville de Paris, 2002, pp 86-87.
Nicolas Courtin, L’art d’habiter à Paris au XVIIe siècle, Dijon, Édition Faton, 2011, pp. 235- 236.