Antiquités Rodriguez
- Jan 31, 2022
- 2 min read

LA GAZETTE N° 1

TROUBADOUR MON AMOUR

GOTHIC REVIVAL PAIR OF WALL LAMPS

Gilded bronze 19th century

L.73cm -H.30cm–P.37cm

« The modern consciousness turned towards the national past » - Victor Hugo

Important pair of three-branches wall lamps out of bronze, gilded with floral interlacings supported by a knight riding a horse as a mounting, surmounted by platform of Gothic inspiration with quadrilobate blind arcades. At the bounds between decorative arts and sculpture, this pair of candelabra wall sconces falls under the scope of a fertile context of rehabilitation of medieval esthetics as of the end of 18th, which will gather momentum from the second half of the 19th century. In this context of flourishing creations, stemming from the “Troubadour” style carried by artists such as Isabey, Eugène Lami, Félicie de Fauveau... and such authors as Chateaubriant and his penetrating “Genius of Christianity”, the french gothic revival was set on sounder intellectual footings by artistic pioneers, like Arcisse de Caumont, who founded the Société des Antiquaires de Normandie at a time when antiquaire still meant a connoisseur of antiquities.

This exhibit is archetypal of the medieval revival current which would spread across the royalist elites back from exile in 1815 : depicting noble knights jousting amid the full panopy of medieval pageantry, the refined wallspaper in Emperor’ Bedroom in Pierrefonds Castle - whose design is attributed to the renowned « historicist » architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc who undertook his restoration in 1857 – is to be drawn closer to our pair of candelabra wall sconces.

The relevance of the attribution of this drawing to Eugène Viollet-le-Duc proves all the more eloquent as a monumental chandelier presenting the same subject was carried out during the same time. Adorned with cavaliers, presenting a scene of hunting where riders subtely prance amid stylised vine tendril motives framed on both sides by an edging of little rosettes the chandelier is composed of 4 branches, keyed in the central barrel, comprising 4 riders holding in their hands a bouquet of 5 lights – namely a total of 20 lights - composed of 4 branches, keyed in the central barrel, comprising 4 riders holding in their hands a bouquet of 5 lights, that is to say a total of 20 lights.

Accordingly, this characteristic typology profoundly anchored in the Troubadour style and its subsequent succeeding stylistic achievements, enables us to draw a parallel between our accurately perio detailed candelabra wall lamps and a potential order place for a surrounding castle of medieval pastiche.