Pair of candlesticks (flambeaux or chandeliers)
Juste Aurèle Meissonnier
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
In the era before gas lighting and electricity, candles played a principal role in illuminating the interior of a house. The number of candles lit was an indication of the status of the owner; beeswax candles, preferred over tallow because they burned cleaner and had a more pleasant smell, were enormously expensive. No wonder, then, that visitors commented on the quantity of light at certain events—as Philip Thicknesse did in his Useful Hints to Those Who Make the Tour of France (1768). The table at a dinner he attended in 1767 "was illuminated with upwards of sixty wax lights." The exuberantly asymmetrical model for this candlestick was the work of Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, one of the leading Rococo designers. Active also as architect, painter, and silversmith to Louis XV, Meissonnier rendered three drawings in order to show from all sides this candlestick with its loosely spiraling stem. The drawings were engraved by Gabriel Huquier (1695–1772) and published in Dousième Livre des oeuvres de J. A. Messonnier: Livre de chandeliers de sculpture en argent (1734–35). The design, incorporating shells, floral sprays, and even a butterfly in a whirlwind of motion, became very popular and was executed in both silver and gilt bronze. The quality of the chasing and gilding of this pair with its burnished and matte areas is outstanding.
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.