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Description: each: signed BARYE bronze with dark green patina

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Dimensions: measurements each: 33 in. alternate measurements 83.8 cm

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Published: Glenn F. Benge, Antoine-Louis Barye, Sculptor of Romantic Realism, Pennsylvania State University, 1984, pp. 76, 150-52, 154, 164, fig. 144, illustrated
Stuart Pivar, The Barye Bronzes - A Catalogue Raisonné, Woodbridge, 1988, pp. 30, 271, illustrated
Lilien F. Robinson and Edward J. Nygren, Antoine-Louis Barye: The Corcoran Collection, Washington, D.C., 1988, pp. 56-57, illustrated
Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Un âge d'or des arts Décoratifs, 1814-1848, exh. cat., Paris, 1991, pp. 447-48, no. 257, illustrated
Michel Poletti and Alain Richarme, A.L. Barye, Artiste et Artisan, exh. cat., Univers du Bronze, Paris, 1992, pp. 28-30, no. 26-28
Michel Poletti and Alain Richarme, Barye: Catalogue Raisonné des sculptures, Gallimard, 2000, pp. 96-97, no. F24, illustrated

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Notes: PROPERTY FROM A NEW YORK PRIVATE COLLECTION
Candelabrum of Nine Lights, a "masterpiece of decorative art," is the most ambitious and complex candelabrum created by the important animalier sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye (Pivar, p. 30). It is the artist's first concerted foray into modeling the ideal female figure and reveals the influence of ancient classical sources and Renaissance art on his work. There are less than 15 versions in existence, two of which are in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Louvre, Paris. An undocumented source suggests that the candelabrum were intended as part of a garniture commissioned by the Duke of Montpensier circa 1840 to flank Roger Abducting Angelica on the Hippogriff (Poletti and Richarme, F23). Allegedly the Duke of Montpensier felt he needed to outdo the magnificent surtout de table Barye created for his younger brother, the Duke of Orléans. In 1846, Barye began working on the individual figural groups present in Candelabrum of Nine Lights. A year later, the finished candelabrum appeared in his first catalogue. At the top of the candelabrum is a grouping of the three graces. According to Glenn F. Benge, "the female nude enters Barye's oeuvre as a significant new theme in the candelabrum, a late complement to the heroic male nudes Barye had created as early as the Milo of Crotona medallion of 1819. Barye's Three Graces are not composed in the well-known arrangement of the ancient type in Siena, for all three figures face inward toward the central shaft of the design, as in the ancient Roman The Three Nymphs as Caryatids, once in the Villa Borghese in Rome. The back view of Barye's standing nudes serve as a foil to the frontal presentation of the goddesses" (p. 150). Barye offered the tiny three graces as a separate sculpture (an example sold in April 2002, Sotheby's London, for £38,240). On the main lower register of the candelabrum, the largest figures are the seated goddesses facing outward: Juno with a peacock, Venus (or Nereid) with Amor, and Minerva with a helmet, sword and owl. Benge notes: "The three goddesses considered as separate forms embody distinct changes in style, almost as a document of Barye's awareness of the key alternatives in the treatment of the ideal nude in sixteenth-century Italian art: from the classical, sensuous Minerva, to the more rigid, attenuated and stylized early Mannerist Juno, to the exaggerated figura serpentinata, the late Mannerist posture of Nereid" (p. 151). The central tier is occupied by three arched, squatting chimeras. Their grotesque physical forms are a foil to the idealized female nude figures of the graces and goddesses. In creating these three distinctive layers of figures, Barye forces the viewer's eye to remain for a moment on each unique grouping before moving to the next, drawing attention to the masterful detail present in each one. The resulting work of art - a nine figure candelabrum - is a dynamic and intricate masterwork by this important artist.