Altar candlestick (one of a pair)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
These candlesticks were probably made for a church altar. The pair entered The Met with the donation of J. Pierpont Morgan in 1917 but seem never to have been on view. They were previously dated to the eighteenth century, however the style and materials point to an earlier date, possibly the second decade of the seventeenth century. The combination of rock crystal and gilt bronze was common in Italian production of metal religious objects in the early seicento. Here, the ornate rock crystal and the cherubs, their hair adorned with small flowers, recall the decorative output of Stefano Maderno and his workshop. Maderno was a prominent sculptor and gifted metalworker in Rome at the beginning of the seventeenth century.[1] The candlesticks could have been designed and then cast in one of the numerous goldsmiths’ shops active around the 1610s, after the completion of the monumental ciborium in the Sistine Chapel in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore and the high altar of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, where many sculptors and goldsmiths jointly produced lavish decorations under Maderno’s supervision. -PD’A Footnotes (For key to shortened references see bibliography in Allen, Italian Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022.) 1. For Stefano Maderno, see Dickerson 2008 and Arnaboldi 2008.
European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.