Pair of candlesticks

Juste Aurèle Meissonnier

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A 1728 design for a candlestick by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier (1695-1750) incorporated a pair of entwined children in its spirally twisted stem. The three drawings for this model were engraved by Louis Desplaces (1682-1739) and published in Deuxième livre de l’oeuvre de J.A. Meissonnier, Chandeliers de sculpture en argent in 1734. This highly sculptural model proved to be very fashionable and was executed with variations both in gilt bronze and in porcelain (an example from the famous Meissen swan service for Count Brühl of 1739 is on view in the German and Austrian Galleries).

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art