Candlestick; Italy, late 18th - early 19th century.

Candlestick; Italy, late eighteenth century - early nineteenth century.
Glazed ceramic, marble and wood.
It presents faults and restorations.
Provenance: Conde Ybarra, Seville.
Measurements: 90 x 113 cm.
Table-table made of marble, wood and glazed ceramic on the top. The table, conceived from a sculptural perspective, sits on a round base of veined marble. The shaft, which depicts a fish and a little angel holding a large shell, gives way to the table top, which is topped with glazed ceramic on the upper part. The top has a profuse figurative design with an outer border adorned with numerous candelieri motifs and medallions in which are alternately seen little lovebirds on defines and cherubs as hippocampi. The central area, dominated by a large medallion, shows Neptune and Amphitrite on a chariot, accompanied by a procession of hippocampi, tritons and cherubs.
Aesthetically this ceramic work presents similar characteristics to Mayolica. Among the main centers of production of historiated majolica, Urbino and Casteldurante stand out; however, there were also numerous factories throughout the country, the most important of which were Faenza, Pesaro, Castelli, Deruta and Caffagiolo. Among the decorative motifs realized throughout the sixteenth century until the first decades of the seventeenth century, the grotesques became, thanks to the frescoes of the Vatican Loggia by Raphael, "raffaelesque" to outline the historiated medallions of dozens of jugs, fountains, dishes often decorated with small sculptures of fantastic animals and caryatids of various shapes.