Workshop of Guido Durantino (later Fontana)

Baron Adolphe de Rothschild (1823-1900), Pregny;

His son Maurice de Rothschild (1881-1957);

Sold by him circa 1916 to Joseph Duveen, New York (included in Duveen album of Adolphe de Rothschild’s collection with stock number 26884);

Philip Lehman, New York, and by descent;

His daughter, Pauline Lehman Ickelheimer, New York;

Her brother, Robert Lehman, New York (according to paper labels attached to the undersides);

Christie’s New York, 2 June 1993, lot 112;

Rainer Zietz, London;

Where acquired, in February 2010. 

Adolphe de Rothschild album, Collection d’Objets d’Art du Baron Adolphe de Rothschild, Pregny, Photographic album c. 1910, Bibliothèque Doucet, INHA, Paris, Fol. F 333.

This pair of istoriato candlesticks is extremely rare and important for their provenance and unique shape. Indeed, not many examples of this type are known to have survived. They can be compared to the pair of candlesticks with a similar shape that are part of a service for Anne de Montmorency, 1st Duke of Montmorency (1493-1567), a dominant figure of the foreign and military policy of King François I. Candlesticks from that service are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the Robert Lehman collection and are illustrated by Jörg Rasmussen.

Lehman (1891-1969) was a banker and one of the greatest benefactors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many plates and dishes of the Montmorency service are signed on the reverse with the inscription: Botega de Mo Guido Durantino in Urbino 1535.

The shape of this pair of candlesticks derives from a design used for luxurious enameled silver candlesticks. A pair of silver and bronze candlesticks of similar shape are illustrated by M. Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis, in At Home in Renaissance Italy, exhibition catalogue, London, 2006, fig. 21.5, p.313. 

RELATED LITERATURE

J. Rasmussen, Italian Majolica in the Robert Lehman Collection, The Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1989, pp. 154-158, nos. 90-91.