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Andrea Riccio trained first as a goldsmith. He owes his renown to the bronze statuettes and functional objects he cast for a small circle of clients, particularly in his native Padua. Although members of his workshop and followers issued, on a level of mass production, bronze oil lamps as well as inkwells and candlesticks, Riccio himself produced only a handful of them, including some unique oil lamps, which transcend utility to become masterpieces. Long in the collection of the Rothschild family, this is one of three superlative examples of its kind; the others are the Morgan Lamp (Frick Collection, New York) and the Cardogan Lamp (Victoria and Albert Museum, London). The three share many motifs, but with fertile imagination Riccio incorporated them into each lamp in such a way that they seem to be in constant state of flux, changing their guise from one object to the other before our eyes.
While its owners may have prized it too highly to use it for lighting, this is a functional oil lamp.
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