A Pair of Louis XVI Gilt and Patinated Bronze Sphinx Chenets

$17500

Status: Available

About

Each with a recumbent winged sphinx with scrolling foliate arabesques to their back, upon a bow-ended rectangular gadrooned plinth, the frieze with a panel applied with entrelacs, on fluted toupie feet. Several models of chenets with sphinx exist, dating from the 1780s. An example with winged sphinxes with headresses and with female mask centering the frieze, attributed to either Pierre Gouthiere or Pierre-Philippe Thomire, exists in several versions in the Louvre, Versailles and the Cleveland Museum of Art (see H. Ottomeyer/P. Preschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol.I, p.276, fig. 4.11.14.). This model is based on a drawing by the architect Francois-Joseph Belanger in the Bibliotheque Nationale, illustrated op. cit., fig. 4.11.13. Another type of sphinx chenet, lacking wings but with similar female mask frieze, is at the chateau de Versailles, the sphinx modelled by Louis-Simon Boizot, the ciselure by Thomire and the gilding by Claude Galle; they were originally supplied to Marie Antoinette's Salon des Nobles at Versailles in 1786 (illustrated Ottomeyer and Preschel op. cit., fig.4.11.17. and also illustrated in Pierre Verlet, Les Bronzes Dores Francais du XVIIIe Siecle, Paris 1987, p.214-5, fig.241-42). See Christie's sale 9756, New York (26 October 2001), Lot 326, for a similar model which sold $28,200.