Candelabrum (pair)

A pair of candelabrum with a handle carved by casting with its plinth and head on an embossed silver plate. Circular base, composed of an intermediate area with a convex profile in between two gradations, repeating the same structure of the head with an inverted truncated cone profile. The handle starts at a tapered neck decorated with glyphs and an ovoid vase knot, followed by lathed scotia topped by a protruding plate that serves a base for the sculpture that s the cup on its head. The ornamentation, embossed or engraved on the knot, maintains a strong mannerist language presence (ces, braces, oval mirrors, segments). It has a bulbous burner.

The typology differs from the model in that its general features have been standardized by the various workshops of New Spain since the sixteenth century, defined by its broad head composed of a tapered narrow stretch between two bulbous bulls decreasing in diameter, the latter of which serves as a burner plate. It adjusts, however, to the sculptural figure handle model which is characteristic of the monstrances of New Spain, especially those of Puebla in the eighteenth century, and is also seen in altar candelabrum and candlesticks. According to its scheme and decoration, this set of candelabrum may have been carved in Puebla de los Angeles around the second quarter and even the mid-eighteenth century if we take into the weight of tradition and the tendency of silversmiths in Puebla to repeat the models that enjoyed greater success and diffusion until later dates.

However, the element that most certainly determines its origin and gives more personality and identity to the piece is the militant angel in an atlas position on the handle, which offers a number of prototypical and proprietary features from the workshops of Puebla. Footwear with buskin or high boots, with skirts and overskirts flapping in the wind and open at the front with bare legs, a breastplate with Roman-style ruffles with flaps hanging from the belt, scalloped in half circles, a square neckline, puffed sleeves on the shoulders and the hair parted falling symmetrically into two halves over the shoulders, reproducing a specific model from Puebla, repeated serially, rigid and stereotyped through the technique of molten wax, appearing in several monstrances made in Puebla de los Angels in the second quarter or second third of the eighteenth century. We reference the monstrance of Palomares del Rio (Seville), dated from 1720-1725[1]; that of San Francisco (Puebla), dated in 1758; or that of the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City (ref. F-259/02576/GCY-0023), dated 1770. With the latter it shares the type of plate that serves as the base for the angel figure and the ovoid shape of the knot with engraved decoration in both cases similar to that seen in the set of candelabrum from the Tacoronte Church (Tenerife) sent from Puebla before 1748 .

The row of dots that runs along the narrow stretch at the bottom of the base is another favorite motif and indicative of the workshops in Puebla, also seen in chalices, monstrance or lamps. Likewise, it is also worth associating with its decorative repertoire the adornment of segments forming valances and the trifoliate plumes linking the base to the four cast s resting thereon; in this case in the form of hemispherical legs flattened instead of the usual clenched claws.

[1]. Sanz Serrano, 1981: volume II, p. 302, fig. 10; and 1995: pp. 86-87, no. 32.

Sources:

Sanz Serrano, Maria Jesus, “La orfebrería en la América española” (The silversmith in Spanish America), enI Jornadas de Andalucía y América(1st Days of Andalucia and America), volume II, Huelva, Diputacion Provincial de Huelva, Instituto de Estudios Onubenses (Onubenses Studies Institute), 1981.

_____, La Orfebrería hispanoamericana en Andalucía Occidental(Hispanic American Sliversmith in Western Andalusia), Seville, El Monte Fundation, 1995.