A very fine pair of Louis XVI gilt bronze mounted white marble three-light candelabra, each with three branched stems with flowering lilies, buds and leaves terminated by a single candle nozzle surrounded by lily leaves, the stems and a ring of stiff leaves issuing from a white marble baluster-shaped vase with an elongated neck and splaying rim, mounted either side by entwined serpent handles, the heads of the snakes resting just above a mounted band around the rim of the vase with beaded swags hanging from their jaws with a beaded band around the body of the vase and around its spreading circular foot, on a square stepped base with a stiff leaf border Paris, date circa 1785 Height 88 cm. each. Literature: Hans Ottomeyer and Peter Pröschel, “Vergoldete Bronzen”, 1986, p. 259, pl. 4.7.12, illustrating one of a pair of very similar candelabra of circa 1780, with lily-wrapped candle branches issuing from a gilt bronze mounted blue Sèvres porcelain vase with very similar mounts consisting of entwined serpent handles, in the Jones Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Pierre Kjellberg “Objets Montés du Moyen Âge à Nos Jours”, 2000, p. 168, illustrating another similar pair of candelabra with five lily branches issuing from blue Sèvres vases mounted with entwined serpent handles. Distinctive lily-spray branch candelabra firstly appeared in engraved patterns during the late 1760s such as those embellishing a vase designed by Jean-François Forty and engraved by Colinet and Fois in “Les Oeuvres de sculpteur en bronze contenant girandoles, flambeaux etc”, published circa 1768. Such decorative motifs were then adopted by the majority of the major ciseleur-doreurs of the late Louis XVI period including François Rémond (1747-1812) and Jean-Louis Prieur (b. circa 1725 d. after 1785). A pair of candelabra in the Wallace Collection London with four branched lily-sprays supported by three putti of circa 1766-70 is tentatively attributed to Prieur (illustrated and described in Peter Hughes, “The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Furniture”, 1996, vol. III, pp. 1219-1222, no. 239, F138-9). On other occasions lily-spray candle branches were supported by beautiful female figures in diaphanous drapery including several examples dating from 1775 in the Königliche Schloss, Warsaw, (illustrated in Ottomeyer and Pröschel, pp. 254-5, pls. 4.7.3-5). As highly fashionable motifs lily-spray branches featured in a design for a mantelpiece garniture of circa 1780 by the architect and designer François-Joseph Bélanger (1744-1818), now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet d’Estampes, Paris (illustrated in Ottomeyer and Pröschel, p. 276, pl. 4.11.13). As here the lily sprays issue from a vase with serpentine handles. A related pair of lily-spray vases of pink marble was in the Wildenstein Collection sale (Christie’s London, 14-15th December 2005, lot 124) while a pair in white alabaster is illustrated in E. Molinier, “Le Mobilier Français du XVIIe et XVIIe Siècle”, p. 60. A further pair was included in the collection of the Earls of Rosebery, Mentmore Towers, Buckinghamshire (sold by Sotheby’s, 18-20th May 1977,lot 80). Like the lily sprays, serpentine motifs were another popular motif of late eighteenth century Neo-classical design. Snakes or serpents were frequently included in ancient Greco-Roman arts and were associated with a variety of symbols varying from eternity, fertility, wisdom as well the power to heal. The snake was also the symbol of Prudence personified, they also formed the hair of Medusa while the handling of snakes formed some of Bacchus’s rites and therefore became an attribute of his attendant satyrs.