"Spirits" Candlesticks By Claude Galle

Pair of "Spirits" Candlesticks by Claude Galle.
Gilt bronze and patinated bronze.
1804-1815. 
? 30 cm.

It is on the record that Claude Galle delivered three pairs of this model to the Palais de Fontainebleau in 1804 and 1805. An receipt dated on November 19, 1804, kept in the French Archives nationales, reveals its iconography: "gilt candlesticks with matte gold spirits heads".

One pair of candlesticks from that order ended up in the Napoleon's second salon at Fontainebleau in 1807 ; the other two pairs ordered in 1804 were in Joséphine's salon. By 1810, there was only one pair of these candlesticks left in Joséphine's (and then Marie-Amélie's) salon. The other two were lit in the throne room.

It is hard to know why it was chosen that two of them would be displayed in the throne room. Perhaps it is due to the peculiarity of their shape and decoration : several scrolls of flowers and fruits adorn a ground filled with amati motifs ; all of it is covered with a carpet in the shape of a six-sided star with finely chiseled fringes and tassels. The carpet is crowned with a flower-zone that separates the gilt bronze base from the six-sided patinated shaft, where stand out the three figures of Spirits and their very fine hair and a drapery so finely sculpted that it is how they are defined in the 1810 inventory of Fontainebleau.

Sources

Jean-Pierre Samoyault, Musée national du château de Fontainebleau. Catalogue des collections du mobilier, t. I, Pendules et bronzes d’ameublement entrés sous le Premier Empire, Paris, 1989.

Marie-France Dupuy-Baylet, L’Heure, le feu, la lumière. Bronzes du Garde Meuble impérial et royal. 1800-1870, Paris, 2010.