226. 226W A pair of large Louis XVI style Napoleon III chased gilt bronze ten-light candelabra, mid 19th century A pair of monumental Napoleon III ormolu ten-light candelabra in the Louis XVI style, mid-19th century Each depicting draped dancing muses holding aloft the foliate and flowering branches terminating in rose and lily-shaped nozzles and drip-pans, on reeded columnar bases hung with berried swags, above beaded and foliate moulding, on a square plinth with canted angles, 45cm diam., 135cm high, (17 1/2in diam., 53in high) Provenance Most probably, Marchese Orso Serra, Villa Serra in Comago, near Genoa. Private Italian collection The model of these candelabra is based on two plaster casts by Etienne Maurice Falconet (1716-1791), known from a drawing by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin executed in the margin of a booklet of the Salon of 1761. Similarly, the draped nymphs or muses can be as well associated to a model by Louis Simon Boizot (1743-1809) who was director of sculpture at Sèvres in 1774 (E. Bourgeois and G. Lechevallier-Chevignard, Le Biscuit de Sèvres, Recueil des modèles de la Manufacture de Sèvres au XVIIIe Siècle, Vol.I, p.23, no.311), see F.J.B. Watson, Wallace Collection Catalogues, Furniture, London, 1956, p.89, F136-7.