Hanukkah Lamp

Occasionally, larger menorah-form lamps are found in Italian synagogues, for example, two in the Padua synagogue of the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. This particular copper-alloy cast type is unusual in the floral decoration on the arms, in which sinuous flowers are placed between the arms rather than on them, and connect and even cover them.
The lamp appears to mix several different types, and an Italian origin is suggested by the only two other examples with provenance, both from Venice. One is in the Scuola Grande synagogue, and the other in the museum of the Jewish community. The flower brackets around the bottom of the shaft are reminiscent of eastern European Hanukkah lamps. However, the construction of this lamp is quite different from menorot from the east. Instead of the eastern European right-angled tenons that attach the arms and flowers to the shaft, this lamp uses screws and solder. Italian menorah-form lamps often have cups for oil placed on top of cylindrical sockets; these were included in the Jewish Museum lamp as well but were removed after its acquisition. The sinuous, Art Nouveau quality of the flowers and the method of assembly suggest a late-nineteenth- or early- twentieth-century date.