# The Gloucester Candlestick > Unrecorded English goldsmith (Canterbury or an itinerant craftsman working in southern England) - 1107-1113 (commissioned) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-english-romanesque-goldsmith/gloucester-candlestick-va/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-16 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unrecorded English goldsmith (Canterbury or an itinerant craftsman working in southern England) - **Date:** 1107-1113 (commissioned) - **Medium:** Gilt copper alloy (bronze with an unusually high silver content), cast by the lost-wax (cire-perdue) process in three sections, with niello and glass-bead inlay - **Dimensions:** Height 58 cm, width 20 cm, depth 20 cm; weight 5.76 kg - **Object type:** Goldsmith's work - **Period:** English Romanesque, early twelfth century - **Current location:** Victoria and Albert Museum, London. On display, Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, Room 8 (The William and Eileen Ruddock Gallery), South Kensington. - **Attribution:** disputed ## Summary A gilt bronze altar candlestick, cast in three sections around 1107 to 1113 for Abbot Peter of Gloucester Abbey, and one of the outstanding survivals of English Romanesque metalwork. Its own inscription names the patron; nothing else about its first fifteen years, whether it survived the fire that destroyed the abbey in 1122, or how it crossed to France, is documented. It resurfaces at Le Mans Cathedral, leaves France in about 1788 shortly before the Revolution, passes through a Le Mans private collection and Prince Soltykoff's Paris collection, and is bought by the South Kensington Museum in 1861, where it has stayed since.Scholars agree it is English work of exceptional quality but disagree on where: Canterbury, a travelling southern English workshop, or, in one minority paper, Gloucester itself. Its closest technical relatives are German, the pair of candlesticks made for Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim, and its closest stylistic register is the Meuse valley tradition typified by Reiner of Huy. The museum's own recent conservation research has found a possible early repair inside the object and an unresolved puzzle in its gilding, evidence that the object is still being actively studied eight centuries after it was made. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1107-1113** Abbey of St Peter, Gloucester (Benedictine), under Abbot Peter `[documented]` (commission and gift) The candlestick's own stem inscription records that it was given to the church of St Peter, Gloucester, by the devotion of Abbot Peter and his community. Peter was elected abbot on 5 August 1107 and died on 17 July 1113, bracketing the date. No independent monastic record of the gift survives; the Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae describes Peter's abbacy in detail without mentioning the candlestick. - **1113-1122** Abbey of St Peter, Gloucester (presumed) `[unknown]` (gap) No document records the candlestick's location or custody in this period. Whether it remained continuously at Gloucester is presumed but not documented. - **1122** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap: possible loss in, or survival of, the Gloucester Abbey fire) Gloucester Abbey burned in March 1122. The Historia et Cartularium lists surviving books and mass robes and does not mention the candlestick, either as a survival or as a loss. - **-c. 1788** Cathedral of Le Mans, France `[disputed]` (transfer, mechanism undocumented; recorded by a grease-pan inscription naming the donor Thomas of Poche) By the time of a second grease-pan inscription, judged on stylistic grounds to be somewhat later than the stem inscription but still medieval, the candlestick belonged to Le Mans Cathedral, given by a Thomas of Poche whose identity is not securely established. Neither the date nor the mechanism of the transfer from Gloucester to Le Mans is documented in any source consulted; this record treats the gap as unresolved rather than assigning it a specific route or date. - **c. 1788-1857** Monsieur d'Espaulart of Le Mans, private cabinet de curiosites `[documented]` (removal from Le Mans Cathedral shortly before the French Revolution, into a private collection) The V&A's own object history states the candlestick was removed from Le Mans Cathedral in about 1788 and entered the collection of Monsieur d'Espaulart of Le Mans, where it remained until the 1857 sale of his collection. The circumstances of the 1788 removal itself are not given. - **1857** Sale of the d'Espaulart collection `[documented]` (auction) Sold at the Hotel des Ventes, rue Drouot, Paris, on 7 May 1857, as part of the Catalogue de la Precieuse collection d'objets d'art et de Haute curiosite de Monsieur d'Espaulart du Mans. Bought by Prince Pierre Soltykoff for 20,000 francs. - **1857-1861** Prince Pierre Soltykoff, Paris `[documented]` (private collection) Held in Soltykoff's collection, one of the most significant nineteenth-century private collections of medieval and Renaissance decorative art, until the dispersal of the whole collection at auction in Paris in 1861. - **1861-present** South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum, London `[documented]` (acquisition) Acquired in 1861 as part of the museum's purchases at the Soltykoff sale, registered as three parts under 7649:1 to 3-1861. The amount the museum itself paid is not given in any source consulted. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1857-05-07** Hotel des Ventes, rue Drouot, Paris (d'Espaulart sale), - Estimate: Not recorded in sources consulted - Hammer: Not separately recorded - With premium: Not separately recorded - Sources consulted give a single figure of 20,000 francs, paid by Prince Pierre Soltykoff, without distinguishing a hammer price from any buyer's premium; this record states the figure as given rather than assuming it is a net hammer price. - **1861** Hotel Drouot, Paris (Soltykoff collection sale), - Estimate: Not recorded in sources consulted - Hammer: Not recorded in sources consulted - With premium: Not recorded in sources consulted - The South Kensington Museum acquired the candlestick at the 1861 dispersal of the Soltykoff collection, one of at least 26 lots the museum bought at that sale, but no source consulted for this record gives the price the museum paid for this lot specifically. ## Open questions - Did the candlestick survive the fire that destroyed Gloucester Abbey in March 1122? The Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae lists what survived the fire and does not mention it, but does not record it as lost either. - By what mechanism and in what year did the candlestick pass from Gloucester Abbey to Le Mans Cathedral? No document bridges the gap between the 1107-1113 commission and its documented presence at Le Mans. - Who was Thomas of Poche, the donor named in the Le Mans inscription? A. Martin's 1856 suggestion that he was a lord of a manor in Maine is a proposal, not a documented identification. - Under what circumstances was the candlestick removed from Le Mans Cathedral in about 1788, shortly before the French Revolution? The sources consulted record the fact and approximate date of removal but not the mechanism. - Was the candlestick made as one of a pair, on analogy with the Hildesheim Bernward candlesticks? The V&A's own catalogue states this claim remains unsubstantiated. - Was the candlestick made in Canterbury, by a traveling craftsman working across southern England, or, as Butler and Green's 2008 paper title claims, near Gloucester itself? The literature is unresolved and this record has not been able to verify the content of the Butler and Green paper. - If the silver-rich alloy already cast to a gold-like colour, as the V&A conservation team's 2008-2009 replica casting experiment suggested, why was the object fire-gilded as well? The museum's own account records this as an open question raised by its own research. - What price did the South Kensington Museum pay for the candlestick at the 1861 Soltykoff sale? Soltykoff's own 1857 purchase price of 20,000 francs is documented; the museum's 1861 purchase price is not given in any source consulted. ## Sources - [1] Victoria and Albert Museum, Explore the Collections, object record for 'The Gloucester Candlestick', museum no. 7649:1 to 3-1861 (object O114078). Primary museum catalogue entry: physical description, both stem and grease-pan inscriptions with translations, object history note, historical context note, and full bibliography. - [2] Victoria and Albert Museum blog, 'A Romanesque Candlestick - Conservation and Research', by the V&A Metals Conservation team (Stephanie Seavers and Catia Viegas Wesolowska). - [3] Wikipedia, 'Gloucester Candlestick'. Tertiary source, consulted for cross-checking and for its own bibliography; flagged for replacement with direct consultation of the print scholarship it cites. - [4] Oman, Charles Chichele. The Gloucester Candlestick. Victoria and Albert Museum Monograph No. 11. London: HMSO, 1958. Cited via the V&A's own object-record bibliography (source 1) and as the source of one of the three published translations of the grease-pan inscription; the monograph itself was not independently consulted for this record. - [5] Harris, Anabel. 'A Romanesque Candlestick in London.' Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 3rd series, vol. XXVII, 1964. Cited via the V&A's own object-record bibliography; not independently consulted for this record. - [6] Borg, Alan. 'The Gloucester Candlestick.' Offprinted from Medieval Art and Architecture at Gloucester and Tewkesbury, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, 1985. Cited via the V&A's own object-record bibliography; not independently consulted for this record. - [7] Cahier, Charles, and Arthur Martin. 'Le Chandelier de Glocester.' Melanges d'Archeologie, vol. IV. Paris, 1856. The earliest scholarly study identified for this object, source of the theory identifying Thomas of Poche as a Maine landholder. Cited via the V&A's own object-record bibliography; not independently consulted for this record. - [8] Hart, William Henry, ed. Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1863-67. Cited via the V&A's own object-record bibliography for the account of Abbot Peter's tenure and the list of items surviving the 1122 fire; the edition itself was not independently consulted for this record. - [9] Viegas Wesolowska, Catia, and Stephanie Seavers. 'The Gloucester Cathedral Candlestick: Ongoing Research.' Journal of the Antique Metalware Society, vol. 16, June 2008, pp. 52-59. Cited via the V&A's own object-record bibliography, corroborating source 2; the journal article itself was not independently consulted for this record. - [10] Butler, Roderick, and Christopher Green. 'The Gloucester Candlestick: A Case for a Gloucester Provenance.' Journal of the Antique Metalware Society, vol. 16, 2008, pp. 60-61. Located via the V&A's own object-record bibliography; only the title and publication details were verified, the argument of the paper was not read for this record. - [11] Zarnecki, George, ed. English Romanesque Art 1066-1200. Exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery, London, 5 April - 8 July 1984. Arts Council of Great Britain, 1984, catalogue no. 247, p. 249; the Gloucester Candlestick entry is attributed to Neil Stratford. Cited via the V&A's own object-record bibliography and Wikipedia's bibliography; not independently consulted for this record. - [12] TCT Magazine, 'Metal 3D printed replica of 12th century candlestick to go on display at Gloucester Cathedral', on the Renishaw additive-manufacturing replica produced for Gloucester Cathedral from a 3D scan of the V&A original. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.