DreamTeamDownloads1, FTP Help, Movies, Bollywood, Applications, etc. & Mature Sex Forum, Rapidshare, Filefactory, Freakshare, Rapidgator, Turbobit, & More MULTI Filehosts - Louis XVs Mistress Wall Lights Discovered in Swinton Castle Hotel

Its Been a Lot of Detective Work: Madame de Pompadours 1MIL PDS Wall Lights Discovered in Yorkshire Hotel

Four gilt-bronze sconces that lit up home of Louis XVs mistress are set to go on sale at Sothebys in December

The Guardian 26 NOV 2024

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The wall lights have hung in the drawing room at Swinton Castle in Yorkshire, now a luxury hotel, for 140 years.

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For almost 140 years, four massive gilt-bronze wall lights have hung in the 18th-century drawing room at Swinton Castle in Yorkshire, now an opulent luxury hotel.

Guests will almost certainly have noticed the one metre-high rococo appliques with their entwined branches decorated with leaves, berries and cherubim, and passed them off as impressive reproductions of more valuable original works.

They would have known they were good, but not how good, said Joo Magalhes, a French and Italian furniture specialist. Now, auction house Sothebys believes it has uncovered missing treasure after tracing the lights history from the grand salon of French king Louis XVs mistress Madame de Pompadour, through generations of European aristocracy.

Magalhes believes the appliques were created by master sculptor Jacques Caffieri. He linked them to two chandeliers made by the artisan who was attached to the French royal household in the 18th century, bearing the same decoration and acquired by de Pompadour.

Although the four wall lights at Swinton are not signed, they bear all the stylistic hallmarks of Caffieris work. After nine months scouring French sale receipts and inventory records, Magalh?es says he has traced the sconces back to Madame de Pompadours homes, first at the Versailles Palace, and then at the Chteau de Crcy at Dreux, west of Paris, a beautiful estate gifted by the king.

It has been a lot of detective work and a little supposition based on facts. We know they are very similar to the chandeliers and we know the chandeliers were moved back and forth with four wall lights. It is difficult to see how the lights we have are not the same lights in the inventories, Magalhes told the Observer.

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A 1756 portrait of Madame de Pompadour by Francois Boucher.

Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, the Marquise of Pompadour known as Madame de Pompadour was the official chief mistress of Louis XV as well as his aide and adviser. She was a major political figure in the royal court at Versailles and patron of the decorative arts and architecture, sponsoring many Enlightenment philosophers and writers, including Voltaire.

She played a central role in making Paris the European capital of taste and culture, and established the Svres porcelain factory, celebrated across the continent.

Even after her sexual relationship with the king ended and he took younger mistresses, Louis XV remained devoted to her through the ill health of her later years until her death from tuberculosis aged 42 in 1764.

De Pompadour was an enthusiastic proponent of the extremely ornamental and dramatic rococo style, also known as late baroque, that emerged in France in the 1730s, and she filled the 15 residences she owned with such artefacts and furnishings.

At the Chteau de Crcy, she could escape the pressures of the royal court and host long visits from the king as well as intellectuals, writers and artists. Her Grand Salon dAssemble was more than 16m long and 8.5m wide, requiring furnishings that measured up to its impressive size.

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