ANTIQUE ENGLISH MIRROR IN GILDED WOOD WITH DOLPHINS, EARLY 19TH CENTURY

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