Large Franz Bergman Orientalist Cold-Painted Bronze Mosque Lamp

16372: Large Franz Bergman Orientalist Cold-Painted Bronze Mosque Lamp
Austrian, c. 1910
Height: 72cm, width 32cm, depth 19cm

This striking cold-painted bronze figural lamp is a fine example of Viennese Orientalist sculpture, depicting a lone worshipper at prayer within the alcove of a mosque. Elaborately conceived and richly coloured, the piece is attributed to the Vienna foundry of Franz Xaver Bergmann, among the most accomplished producers of cold-painted bronze figural lamps of the period.

The worshipper stands barefoot upon a patterned prayer rug; both arms raised in the gesture of prayer and his head inclined upward beneath a red and white turban. He wears a long robe with gilt highlights, gathered at the waist by a sash striped in red and green, his cloak falling in loose folds behind him; his slippers are set aside at his feet in accordance with custom. The alcove is framed by a pair of spirally twisted columns, and behind him a blue curtain edged in red is drawn back with a tasselled cord to reveal a latticed grille window set into the stonework, a small ovoid jug resting beside it.

Above the alcove rises the mosque's principal dome, cast with a diamond lattice and encircled at its base by a band of pierced arched windows inset with coloured glass panels in green and red, which glow when the lamp is illuminated. A pseudo-Arabic inscription runs in relief beneath the dome, which is surmounted by a crescent finial. Adjoining it, a tall square minaret rises to a pointed spire, its shaft pierced with arched openings and encircled partway up by a projecting balustraded balcony. A voluminous canopy worked in deep red with gilt highlights sweeps across the composition, lending movement to the architectural mass beneath. The whole is raised on a naturalistically modelled stepped rocky base in patinated bronze.

Cold painting, in which pigment is applied to the cast surface without firing, was perfected in Vienna during the second half of the 19th century and allowed for a range of colour unattainable in patinated bronze alone. The technique was applied above all to Orientalist subjects, which drew on European fascination with the Near East and were produced in Vienna in considerable variety, from small cabinet groups to ambitious architectural lamps such as this. The underside is stamped with the maker's mark of a 'B' within an urn-shaped cartouche, together with further foundry marks, consistent with Austrian production of the late 19th to early 20th century.

Combining a devotional subject with an inventive architectural setting, this lamp demonstrates the technical accomplishment and imaginative repertoire for which the Bergmann foundry remains admired, and would make a commanding presence in a period or contemporary interior alike.
$67,500