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The silver wall sconce with a single candleholder shown in the was presented to Czar Alexis Mikhaylovich by an ambassador from the States General of the Dutch Republic in 1648. It was made in The Hague by Hans Conraedt Breghtel, who was born in Nuremberg, Germany and became one of the most famous silversmiths working in The Hague at the time. The sconce is decorated with motifs in the auricular style that was popular in the seventeenth century and is exemplified by rippling forms that resemble the human ear. The style was initiated by goldsmiths of the van Vianen family of Utrecht and spread throughout Europe in the first decades of the seventeenth century. The round medallion in the centre of this wall light bears a Russian two-headed eagle under two crowns with an eight-pointed star between them.
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