This type of hanging lamp, known as a cesendello, was a common element in bronze chandeliers known as polychandelons in Roman and Byzantine times and later became popular in both Venice and the Islamic world as larger individual lamps. Extraordinarily delicate, few cesendelli from the Renaissance period survive. The Christian subject matter—the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary—represented in the roundels of this example confirms its patron was from Venice rather than the Islamic world.

Open full-size image