Pair of ancient columns, Sea Green Marble & Bronze, XIXth century

"pair of ancient columns - green marble of sea & bronze - period: nineteenth century" Magnificent pair of ancient columns in sea green marble and gilded bronze. Each column rests on a stepped base, decorated with a frieze of acanthus leaves in gilded bronze, revealing a carved marble barrel, surmounted by a corinthian capital. Period: xixth – napoleon III. Dimensions: height: 100cm. Dimensions pedestals and capitals: 25cm X 25cm. With the return of the empire in 1852, napoleon III wanted to restore its splendour and grandeur. The architecture and decorations will then serve the image of the regime and evolve towards a charged style with a pronounced taste for luxury and splendour. The napoleon III style thus offers a deliberately sumptuous style of decoration, little concerned with historical reality, but which puts aesthetics at the center with an abundance of polychromy and ornamentations elaborated in particular with the influence of ancient architecture and especially greco-roman. The marble long used in ancient architecture with its firm and dense structure allowed to have columns as solid as beautiful. It is therefore with as much interest that we saw reappear in the nineteenth century, columns and pedestals in italian marble with sumptuous colors and veins, ultimate decorative object to magnify sculptures and bronzes.