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Lot Essay
The clock ornament, inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses, serves as an allegory of Europe and evokes Cupid's power since antiquity. Jupiter's vivifying fulcrum is supplanted by the winged badge of Cupid's torch, and is born aloft by Jupiter's attendant eagle flying from a love-enflamed altar. Fire-guarding griffin, sacred to Apollo as leader of poets, attend the Egyptian-'battered' and palm-wreathed altar. Here Europa's history is celebrated by a bas-relief of her loving abduction by Jupiter in the guise of the Dionysiac bull. A composition that is likely to derive from an engraving entitled Jupiter Europam Rapit by Gerard de Lairesse (d.1711) ('Die Verführing der Europe', Exhibition Berlin, 1988, no.151).
Another version of this clock-model bears a movement by the rue Saint-Honoré clock-manufacturer Jean-François De Belle (maître in 1781), who participated in the Directoire jury that innovated a new time system based on a thirty day month in 1793 (sold from the collection of F.P. Victoria and son, Christie's New York, 27 May 1999, lot 49 ($13,800)
Nicholas-Alexandre Folin maître horloge in 1784.
Another version of this clock-model bears a movement by the rue Saint-Honoré clock-manufacturer Jean-François De Belle (maître in 1781), who participated in the Directoire jury that innovated a new time system based on a thirty day month in 1793 (sold from the collection of F.P. Victoria and son, Christie's New York, 27 May 1999, lot 49 ($13,800)
Nicholas-Alexandre Folin maître horloge in 1784.