Designed in the Louis XIV 'antique' manner, with its acanthus-wrapped baluster vase stem, caryatid heads and cherubic masks, this magnificent chandelier is related to documented patterns by the ébéniste, ciseleur, doreur et sculpteur du Roi , André-Charles Boulle (1641-1732).
A chandelier of virtually identical design is in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (inv. 4837 and ill. V. Baur, op. cit., p. 78, ill. 98), while the distinct pierced herm volutes flanking the baluster as well as the plumed masks supporting the square-sectioned branches can also be found on the celebrated set of four chandeliers attributed to Boulle in the Bibliothèque Mazarin, Paris (H. Ottomeyer, P. Pröschel, op. cit., p. 54, ill. 1.6.10), which had been confiscated from the duc de Brissac in 1795.
An engraving, first published by Daniel Marot in his Nouveaux Livre d'Orfevrie Invent par Marot Architecte du Roi of 1710, although conceptually of twenty or thirty years earlier, illustrates several chandeliers with lambrequin-capped female masks, as well as the distinctive acanthus-wrapped S-scroll arms (op. cit., p. 50, ill. 1.6.1).
Intriguingly, a sepia drawing of circa 1830-40 by Friedrich Nerly (1807-1878) of Carl Friedrich von Rumohr (1785-1843) and Wolf Graf von Baudissin (1789-1878) seated in the hall of Gut Rantzau shows the chandelier in situ. Noteworthy also are the superb Beauvais tapestries seen in the background, famously acquired by the German government in 1914 as decoration for the Reichstag.