Antique English giltwood mirror decorated with dolphins, early 19th century

Large oval mirror in carved and gilded wood, decorated with a frame of dolphins with intertwined tails emerging from the waves. The scales are worked with great care. The stylized dolphin motif is frequently used in decoration. From Antiquity to the Italian Renaissance, representations of dolphins (ridden by Amphitrite, accompanying Venus, or entwined around an anchor) are generally realistic. From the Renaissance until the beginning of the 19th century, ornamentalists focused on the animal's slender and supple form. They transformed it into a kind of chimera, distorting its head, beak, and tail and treating it like an arabesque. Very popular towards the end of the 18th century and until the 1840s, the dolphin was frequently reproduced as a decorative ornament on fountains, candelabras, clocks, and goblets. Our antique mirror features these fantastic and hybrid marine animals with their undulating forms. English work. 19th century.