# Paschal candlestick \(detail\) [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [RICCIO, Andrea]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Bronze ## Commentary The candlestick rests on an ornamentally carved marble base, so that the bottom plinth is at eye level; it is unashamedly pagan, with four friezes of marine scenes very like Mantegna, other mythological scenes with monstrous creatures, and four large winged sphinxes at the angles. According to a later 16th-century interpretation, the sphinxes represented Astrology, Music, Historiography and Cosmography \(geography\). Above them are four large panels, three of which show standard themes appropriate to a candlestick that was to be lit on Easter Day: the Adoration of the Magi, Entombment and Descent into Limbo. The last panel, however, depicts a most peculiar, pagan-looking Sacrifice at an Altar Crowned with a Statuette of the Risen Christ, rather than a straightforward depiction of the Resurrection, the event that is crucial in Christian belief and that occurred at Easter. ## Related artworks - [Arion]() - [Della Torre Monument]() - [Della Torre Monument: Relief \#1]() - [Della Torre Monument: Relief \#2]() - [Della Torre Monument: Relief \#2]() - [Della Torre Monument: Relief \#3]() - [Della Torre Monument: Relief \#4]() - [Della Torre Monument: Relief \#5]() - [Della Torre Monument: Relief \#6]() - [Della Torre Monument: Relief \#7]() - [Della Torre Monument: Relief \#8]() - [Finding of the Cross]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()