Pair of Torchères
Details
- Date
- Late-1700s
- Author / Artist
- After James 'Athenian' Stuart
- Dimensions
- 185cm high
- Material
- Wood
- Catalogue number
- SS.8.1-2
- Current location
- Museum
Pair of gilt wood torcheres, after a design by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart, shallow bowls, with applied leafage and ribbon garlands, with bacchanalian masks over three supports, in the form of gryphons, on three leopard monopods, incurved triform base.These remarkable ‘atheniennes’ display an almost archaeological approach to furniture design; inspired by the tripod stand discovered in the Temple of Isis at Pompeii, which was displayed in the Museum of Antiquities at Portici, a well-trodden route for gentlemen on their Grand Tour. However, the adoption of the new Neo-Classical aesthetic may draw on sources rather closer to home.The ‘athenienne’ or torchère form was adopted by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart for the Painted Room at Spencer House, London, generally considered to be the first fully integrated Neo-Classical interior in England. Clearly inspired by Roman painted interiors such as those which Stuart himself saw on his visits to Pompeii and Herculaneum in 1748, classical references punctuate every aspect of the scheme: the chimneypiece was copied in part from the famous Aldobrandini wedding, the frieze was taken from the Erechtheion in Athens, the doorcases taken from the Incantada at Salonnika and the columnar screen from the Temple of Fortuna Virilia in Rome. It is easy to imagine that Richard Grenville, 2nd Earl Temple and his nephew and heir would have been familiar with Stuart’s scheme via their near neighbours the Spencer’s, furthermore a firm connection with Stuart is known, given that the Stowe South Portico features a version of the frieze from the Lysicates Monument in Athens, taken from Stuart & Revett’s The Antiquities of Athens, 1762. The original antique prototype for this model was found in the Isis temple is now in the Museo Archeologico, Naples. It was subsequently engraved by Gian Battista Piranesi in his Vasi, Candelabri, Cippe of 1778, pl. 44 – and interestingly Piranesi’s engraving clearly reiterates the scale and proportion of the Stowe atheniennes. Widely copied in bronze in the early 19th century, the design was popularised in a more compressed and reduced form in C. Percier and P. Fontaine’s Recueil de Décorations Intérieures of 1801, pl. 23 and 33. They were almost certainly the designers of a pair of tripod basin stands supplied around 1802/3 for the bedroom of the Emperor Napoleon and Empress Josephine at the Château de Saint-Cloud.