Antique French Gilt Bronze Angel Bénitier on Velvet Mount

Antique French Angel Holy Water Font on Velvet

France | 19th Century

A standing angel in gilt metal, wings folded upright to frame the figure, one hand laid at the breast and the other raised with a spray of lilies. Beneath the feet the clouds gather into a bank of silvered cherub heads, and out of the middle of them the basin rises: a small gilt cup, the entire purpose of the object and the least assuming part of it.

This is a bénitier, a domestic holy water font. Any French household of even modest observance kept one, usually beside a bedroom door, where the last gesture of the evening and the first of the morning was to touch the water. Most were stamped out by the thousand and look it. This one was cast with some ambition: the drapery falls in real folds, the wing feathers are chased individually, and the cherub heads below have been given distinct faces rather than one face repeated.

It is mounted, as these almost always were, on a shaped wooden backboard covered in velvet. Here that velvet is a faded rose red gone soft and dusty with light and time, which is exactly the state you want it in. Original velvet of this age reads far better than replaced velvet, and is a good deal harder to find.

The lily settles the iconography. It makes this an Annunciation angel, Gabriel or the type, though the workshops turning these out were not always strict about such things. 14” x 8” 

Details

• Object: Bénitier, holy water font
• Material: Gilt and silvered metal on a velvet-covered wooden backboard
• Subject: Standing angel with lilies above a cloud and cherub basin
• Origin: France
• Date: 19th century
• Condition: Good antique condition, with rubbing to the gilding and softening and fading to the velvet consistent with age