A Pair of Russian Ormolu-Mounted Lapis Lazuli Veneered Candlesticks. Unknown Maker, likely St. Petersburg, third quarter 1... (Total: 2 Items)

Description

A Pair of Russian Ormolu-Mounted Lapis Lazuli Veneered Candlesticks
Unknown Maker, likely St. Petersburg, third quarter 19th century
16-1/4 x 8-1/2 x 8-1/2 inches (41.3 x 21.6 x 21.6 cm) (each)

PROVENANCE:
A La Vieille Russie, New York.


This pair of lapis lazuli mosaic veneered candlesticks in the Louis XVI revival style of the 18th century bear comparison to a suite of important ormolu-mounted lapis works of art designed by the Russian Imperial Court Architect Ippolit Monighetti, a Russian architect of Swiss background.

Born in Moscow, Monighetti attended the Stroganov School and later studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Alexander Brullov. He established himself as a fashionable architect with the design of several villas at Tsarskoe Selo, including those created for Princess Yusupov and Prince Bagration. In 1850, Emperor Nicholas I entrusted him with transforming a Turkish bath in Catherine Park into a small mosque-inspired pavilion. During the 1860s, he also redesigned and updated a number of rooms inside the Catherine Palace.

One of these rooms, the Lyons Hall, included important gilt-bronze mounted lapis-lazuli furnishings designed by Monighetti with the monogram of Empress Maria Alexandrovna, the wife of Alexander II. The pieces were specially commissioned in 1856 from the Peterhof Lapidary Works after Monighetti's designs to contrast with the yellow silk-hung walls after which the room was named. The Empress commissioned several other pieces of ormolu-mounted lapis, including a large pair of girandoles which were later inherited by her son, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, and which were installed by the architect Maximilian von Messmacher in the "Golden Staircase" of the Vladimir Palace in the 1880s.

The offered lot may have been inspired by these works, or by a maker working with one of the many lapidary studios at Peterhof or in Ekaterinburg.


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