A LARGE BRONZE BYZANTINE LAMP STAND, 6TH-7TH CENTURY AD

拍品描述

A LARGE BRONZE BYZANTINE LAMP STAND, 6TH-7TH CENTURY A.D. Of tripod form, rising from three splayed feline paw feet set on small disc plinths to a tri-lobed base with concave sides sweeping upward to meet the central column. The shaft is composed of tubular sections joined by turned mouldings and articulated by a central bulbous knop, the whole treated as a plain colonnette of slightly tapering profile. The upper terminal is formed by a further baluster knop supporting a wide circular drip-tray with a raised rim, from the centre of which projects an iron pricket for securing a candle or taper. The surface carries a green patina with areas of darker olive and brown, consistent with prolonged burial. The vocabulary of the object is drawn directly from late Roman domestic and ecclesiastical metalwork. The paw feet, with their clearly modelled toes and pads, continue a lineage of animal-footed supports that runs through Hellenistic and Roman furniture into the Christian period, where the motif is retained on candelabra, lamp stands, and censer supports. The columnar shaft, with its ring mouldings and central knop, echoes in miniature the architectural columns of the basilicas and martyria in which such stands were used. The pricket top marks the object as intended for a wax candle rather than an oil lamp, a form that becomes increasingly common in the Eastern Mediterranean during the later sixth and seventh centuries as candle lighting replaces or supplements oil lighting in liturgical settings. Bronze lamp and candle stands of this scale were produced across the Byzantine world, with major workshops attested in Constantinople, the Syrian coast, and Egypt. Their function was both practical and ceremonial. Freestanding stands of this height carried a single candle at approximately shoulder or head level and were used in pairs or larger sets to flank an altar, an icon, a tomb, or the entrance to a sanctuary. Domestic examples served the same purpose in wealthy households and in the private chapels of the aristocracy. The material itself, cast bronze, was the standard medium for Byzantine ecclesiastical fittings below the level of precious-metal commissions, valued for durability, for the sober green surface it developed with age and use, and for its capacity to be cast in the tubular and turned forms that this stand exemplifies. The construction in separately cast sections joined at the mouldings is characteristic of the type and allowed for repair and reassembly over long periods of service. This lamp stand exemplifies the sober, architectural idiom of Early Byzantine bronze lighting furniture, in which classical vocabulary, the paw foot, the turned column, the moulded knop, is retained but stripped of ornament and adapted to the requirements of Christian liturgical space. Surviving complete, with its original pricket and tripod base intact, it stands as a representative example of the freestanding candle stands that furnished sixth- and seventh-century churches and elite interiors across the Eastern Mediterranean. 122CM

图片