A PAIR OF ROMAN BRONZE CANDLESTICKS ATTRIBUTED TO GISUSEPPE BOSCHI, LATE 18TH OR EARLY 19TH CENTURY |

the barrel with foliage and bird motifs flanked by three cranes leaning against each other and perched on ram's heads, resting on a triangular base with three winged lions

Born in 1766, Giuseppe Boschi was active in Rome in 1783 and awarded the prize from the Saint Luc Academy. Although very renown for his Antiquity scale models, his versions were less expensive than those made by Righetti or Valadier. The architect Charles Tatham greatly appreciated Boschi's craftsmanship with whom he probably collaborated regularly. He commissioned several candlesticks for Carlton House, the Prince of Wales residence. 

These candlesticks are very close to a Boschi design kept at the Victoria and Albert Museum with minor differences along the base. The same cranes appear on another pair of gilt bronze and rosso antico marble at the Pitti Palace, studied by Alvar Gonzales-Palacios in Il Tempio del Gusto, Milan, 1984, vol. II, fig. 283. All these models were derived from the famous Newdigate candelabras belonging to Piranese, who restored them and are now housed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

 

A gilt bronze pair of an identical model was in the Parisian apartment belonging Alvar Gonzales-Palacios and was auctioned for 12,000 € at Sotheby's, Paris, 29 March 2007, lot 87.