Candlesticks, Candelabras, & Chandeliers

The following links to period artwork and artifacts present a survey of candle-holders, whether wall-mounted, ceiling-mounted (chandeliers), or free-standing (candlesticks and candelabras), focused largely on domestic and secular examples. I've attempted to classify and organize them into different headings, to facilitate navigation of this list; my attempts at classification is not an official taxonomy of pre-17th century lighting fixtures.

Most such items represented in period artwork as gold-toned are probably copper or brass (as demonstrated in several extant examples in this list), but they could also be a gilt metal.

Let There Be Light also features some additional artworks and artifacts for these and other period lighting sources; other articles of interest include History of Lighting Traced by Science, Master Bedwyr Danwyn's "Medieval Lighting" guides, and these links on medieval lighting too.

I've also seen some interesting 15th-16th century candlesticks at a webpage for Huntington Antiques, but I'm not sure how long those photos will appear online.

• Schnütgen-Museum H 851, bronze candlestick: a man, 6th century?
• A jester, Lower Rhine, c. 1300
• Met 41.100.130, pricket candlestick with a boy, copper alloy, South Netherlandish, c. 1300
• Walters 54.84, candlestick with a young page, German, 14th-15th century
• German candlesticks, 15th-16th centuries
• Double candlestick: a crossbowman, Rhineland, 15th century
• Bronze candlestick: a young man with large sleeves (also here, here, and here), Lower Rhine, 15th century
• Fragmentary double candlestick - figure of a man with his arms outstretched (also here), Netherlands, 15th century
• Double candlestick of a man (a servant?) with his arms outstretched, South Tyrol, 15th century
• Cl.17086, base of a bronze candlestick: a wild man, France, 15th century
• Städtisches Museum im Roten Adler 6736, candlestick: St. Christopher, brass, second half of the 15th century
• V&A 2073-1855, brass or bronze candlestick with a young man, Germany, early 16th century
• Bronze candlestick: a fashionable young man (also here), Nuremburg, 16th century
• Bronze candlestick: an armored man, Germany, 16th century
• V&A M.4-1953, brass candlestick with a bearded man, Germany, early to mid-16th century
• Brass candlestick: a landsknecht, Germany, 16th century
• Bronze candlestick: a young man (also here) Nuremburg, 16th century

• Bronze bird-shaped lamp, Rhine, 12th-14th century
• Romanesque candelholder: a stag, bronze, 12th century
• V&A 1595-1855, pricket candlestick an elephant, cast bronze, Germany, c. 1200-1400
• GNM KG600, an elephant candleholder, copper alloy, Lower Saxony, 13th century
• Candlestick: a horse (also here), Germany, c. 1300
• Candleholder: a stag, Dinant, 14th century
• Pricket candleholder with a monster holding a shield, 14th-15th centuries

• Two candleholders: a man riding a horse, and a man riding a lion, 12th century
• Louvre OA748, candlestick with a woman on horseback holding a tree-branch, 12th century
• Walters 54.784, gilt bronze candlestick with Samson and the Lion, Mosan workshop, early 13th century
• Rijksmuseum BK-16917, a bronze candleholder with a man riding a double-headed dragon, Hildesheim, first half of the 13th century

• Copper alloy candleholder, c. 1000
• V&A 7649:1 to 3-1861, the Gloucester Candlestick, gilt cast-metal alloy, England, c. 1104-1113 (see video)

• A pair of candlesticks from Salzburg, c. 1200-1220
• Pricket candleholder, Lower Saxony, 13th century
• Walters 44.596, pricket candlestick with heraldic decoration (the combined arms of Bernard VIII, count of Comminges, and his second wife, Marguerite de Turenne, alternating with the royal arms of France) in champlevé enamel on copper, France, early 14th century
• Candlestick made in France in the 14th or 15th century
• Pricket candleholders, 14th-15th centuries
• Pair of pricket candleholders, 15th century
• Pair of pricket candleholders, Germany, 15th century
• Wooden pricket candlestick, Regensburg, 15th century
• Iron candelabras at the Met, 14th-16th century: 41.190.329, 41.190.319a,b, 47.100.68, 38.168.5, 38.168.7, 38.168.8, 47.100.67, 47.101.76, 47.101.75, 47.100.65, 55.61.66
• Met 38.168.3 and 38.168.4, pricket candlesticks, iron, Italian (?), 15th century
• Pricket candleholder and another pricket candleholder, Rhineland, 15th century
• Pricket candleholder, Lower Rhine, 15th century
• Jokob Mulner from the Mendel Hausbuch, 1471
• A candleholder which holds three candles on prickets, supported in sockets, from Bardejov, Slovakia, c. 1490-1510
• Candlestick in The Death of Mary from the altarpiece at Mariapfarr, c. 1495-1505
• Cleveland 1974.185, Netherlands (Meuse Valley), 16th century
• Pricket candleholder, Lower Rhine, 16th century
• Brass pricket candleholder, Lower Rhine, 16th century
• Brass pricket candleholder, Lower Rhine, 16th century
• Pricket candleholder, Rhineland, 16th century
• Pair of pricket candleholders, Rhineland, 16th century

• LACMA M.2002.1.6, brass candlestick, originally inlaid with silver and gold; made in Egypt or Syria about 1342-1346
• French candlesticks made in the 14th or 15th centuries here and here
• Portable candle holder, copper alloy, Gloucestershire, c. 14th-15th century
• Candlestick, Netherlands, 14th-15th century
• Magyar Nemzeti Müzeum 1902.42.27, a hammered-iron candlestick, 15th century
• Candlestick, 15th century
• Copper candlestick (Kerk O.L.Vrouw Geboorte), 15th century
• Suckling Madonna Enthroned by Jan van Eyck, c. 1436
• Detail from The Birth of Mary, c. 1460-1465
• German candlesticks, 15th-16th centuries
• Iron candelabras at the Met, 15th century: 41.190.316a,b, 38.168.9
• Double candlestick, Netherlands, 15th century
• Brass candlestands, 15th century
• Cast-iron candlestick, Germany, first half of the 15th century
• Annunciation by Robert Campin, 1420s
• The Mérode Altarpiece by Robert Campin, 1427 (detail)
• Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, 1432 (detail)
• At the home of Pietro di Vinciolo in The Decameron (BNF Arsenal 5070, fol. 215v), 1432
• Detail from The Death of Mary, c. 1438-1440
• Alexander in disguise and Darius III, The History of Alexander (BNF Fr. 9342 fol. 105v), 1448-1449
• Presentation scene, Directorium ad passagium faciendum/Voyage to Outremer (BNF Fr. 9087, fol. 1), third quarter of the 15th century
• Kuncz Franck from the Mendel Hausbuch, 1458
• St. Jerome in his Study by Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1480
• Meals: dinner, De proprietatibus rerum (BNF Fr. 9140, fol. 116), 1480
• The Annunciation by Hans Memling, c. 1480-1489
• Annunciation in the Coronation of Mary altarpiece at Spisska Kapitula, Slovakia, 1499
• Hypermestra, Ovid's Heroides (BNF Fr. 873, fol. 90v), 15th-16th century
• Detail from the delivery of a newborn, 1513
• January from the Da Costa Hours (PML 399, fol. 2v), c. 1515
• Detail from The Birth of Mary, c. 1520
• A candlestick, The Tudor Pattern Book (Ashmole 1504, fol. 3v), c. 1520-1530
• The Money-Changer and his Wife by Marinus van Reymerswale, 1539
• Two Tax Gatherers by the workshop of Marinus van Reymerswaele, c. 1540
• St. Jerome by Marinus van Reymerswale, 1541
• Cleveland Museum of Art 1973.169.1, enameled candlestick with the Triumph of Diana attributed to Jean II de Court, c. 1565
• Candlestick supported by three dolphins (also here), Germany, 16th century
• Brass candlestick, 16th century
• Wrought-iron three-footed candlestick, Germany, 16th century
• Candleholder, Germany, 16th century
• Two candlesticks, Germany, 16th century
• Pair of brass candlesticks (also here, and here), Germany, 16th century
• A candle holder from the Mary Rose (1545)
• Diptych of Peter Ulner by Bartholomew Bruyn the Younger, 1560
• Brass candlestick, Germany, 16th century
• Knob from a 16th century German candlestick
• Jamestown 7363-JR, earthenware candlestick stem made in England c. 1617

• Wall-mounted candleholder and another wall-mounted candleholder, Cologne, 14th century
• Oil lamp (with wall-mounting hanger and an animal on the lid), Cologne, 15th century
• Annunciation by Robert Campin, 1420s
• The Mérode Altarpiece by Robert Campin, 1427 (detail)
• Virgin and Child in an Interior, 1435
• The Werl Altarpiece by Robert Campin, 1438 (detail)
• Annunciation Triptych by Rogier van der Weyden, 1440 detail)
• Wall-mounted candleholder, Florence, late 15th century
• The Flagellation of Christ and The Mocking of Christ from a retable at Medias, Romania, c. 1480-1490
• Met 55.61.25, iron candlestick bracket, 15th-16th century
• Arm for a wall-mounted candleholder, mid-16th century

• Dom Felice with Fra Puccio's wife in the Decameron (BNF Arsenal 5070, fol. 108v), 1432
• Chandelier, first half of the 15th century (caption info here)
• Brass chandelier with a lion, 15th century Flanders (note stylistic similarity to the Arnolfini chandelier, below)
• Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife by Jan van Eyck, 1434 (detail)
• Annunciation Triptych by Rogier van der Weyden, 1440
• Madonna and child in an interior, c. 1450
• Presenting the prize to the victor in the Tournament-Book of King René d'Anjou (BNF Fr. 2692, fol. 70v), 15th century
• Bal des ardents, Froissart's Chronicles (BNF Fr. 2646, fol. 176), second half of the 15th century
• Brass chandelier made in the southern Netherlands in the second half of the 15th century
• Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament by Dieric Bouts the Elder, 1464-67
• Chandelier with an armored man and iron castles on an antler (a similar aesthetic to the leuchterweibchen), fourth quarter of the 15th century
• The Lute Player and the Harpist by Israhel van Meckenem the Younger, 1490
• The Ambassadors Depart by Vittore Carpaccio, 1495-1500
• Brass chandelier, 16th century
• January from the Da Costa Hours (PML 399, fol. 2v), c. 1515
• A chandelier from Bardejov, Slovakia, c. 1500-1530 (obviously converted to electric some time in the 20th century)
• Brass chandelier with twelve lights and a wildman, made in southern Germany c. 1541-1560
• A ball in Augsburg, c. 1590-1595