Style Neo-Renaissance / Ref.10434

Exceptionnal Neo-Renaissance style pair of andirons in bronze with brown patina, decorated with crowned salamanders and the Camondo's coat of arms

Dimensions
Width 18'' ½  47cm
Height 37''   94cm
Depth: 7'' ⅞  20cm

Origin:
France, second half of 19th century.
According to oral tradition, these andirons would come directly from the Camondo home and would have been offered to an employee of the house.

Status:
In excellent condition.

This magnificent pair of andirons bears the coat of arms of the Camondo family, an important family of bankers in the second half of the 19th century.

In Neo-Renaissance style, the general shape of these andirons takes up the pyramidal symmetry of the 16th and 17th century andirons. On each, two salamanders crowned in position S, symbols of Francis I, face each other. Their bodies are animated by nervous muscles, pointed bones and scales worthy of the fantastic register that characterizes the century.
Each pair of salamanders supports an elaborate scepter, composed of a ball worked in interlaced openwork, above which the Camondo's coat of arms is framed by two busts of sumptuously dressed women. The motto "Fides et Caritas" (Faith and Charity) and details of the coat of arms are carved with precision: joined hands and coins, lily flowers and stars of David.
The andirons are topped of a crown and a flower bud.

Exiled from Spain to Istanbul, the Camondo founded in 1802 an important bank of the Ottoman Empire which later became a senior partner of the Bank of Paris and the Netherlands. Not only bankers, the Camondo participated actively throughout the first half of the nineteenth century in the economic, urban and educational development of the Ottoman Empire.

Attached to Italy, Abraham-Salomon Camondo supported the reunification of this country, and found himself ennobled by Victor Emmanuel II in 1867. Became Counts of Camondo, his grandsons Abaraham-Behor and Nissim de Camondo immediately established themselves in Paris under Napoleon III and had two private mansions built in the Rue de Monceau. Their respective sons Isaac and Moses became major collectors of Paris at the end of the century. While Moses is passionate about decorative art of the 18th century, Isaac de Camondo, a friend of Monet with an artist's temperament, is an eclectic collector interested in sculptures from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
The family died in deportation during the Second World War.