Pair of Regence style candlesticks

A pair of gilt bronze candlesticks. Each candlestick lies on a cicular base bordered with a godrooned moulding and engraved with a frieze of flowers.
The umbilicus and the knot present a décor of flowers and lambrequins. Each face of the square stem is decorated with an interlaced pattern and with small flowers. The stem presents four profiles of emperors in relief. The nozzle is decorated with lanceolate leaves and with a frieze of Greeks and small flowers. The circular bobeches are godrooned.
At the end of Louis XIV’s reign, a lightening of the shapes, a greater variation in the decor, an emphasis of the game of relief and a multiplication of lambrequins and interlaced motifs can be noticed. Progressively the classicism rigor and a kind of monumentality are replaced by an intense research of variation in the detail.
This pair of Napoleon III candlesticks reproduces the stylistic characteristics of the end of Louis XIV’s reign and of the Regence