Pair of Candlesticks

Object belonging

One's own

Category

Bronze sculpture

City

Rome

Location

Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia

Specific location

Room 16

Inventory

PV 09337

Material and technique

Bronze, natural brown patina with traces of silvering and gilding

Author

Venetian School

Dating

Late 16th-early 17th century

Dimensions

34.5 x 11 x 11 cm. and 32 x 11 x 11 cm.

Origin

Barsanti Collection (1934)

Image copyright

SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Short description

This pair of candlesticks is richly decorated, with every space covered with foliage, scrolls, and children’s faces. They were designed to stand on the altar of a chapel of a noble family, hence the traces of gilt and silver plating, which can just be made out. The bases of a pair in the Adda Collection bore the stem of the Venetian Pesaro family. The depiction of children’s faces on the stems does not merely suggest their style was dependent on Niccolò Roccatagliata, but serves to date the bronzes between the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries.

Pietro Cannata

Bibliography

L. Pollak, Raccolta Alfredo Barsanti (Trecento-Settecento), Bergamo 1922, no. 100 p.139; A. Santangelo, Museo di Palazzo Venezia. Catalogo delle sculture, Rome 1954, p. 52; W. Wixom, Renaissance bronzes from Ohio collections , Kent-Ohio 1975, no. 126; A. Radcliffe in, Renaissance and later sculpture: with works of art in bronze. The Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, London 1992, no. 42 p. 238.