Lot Essay
This Grecian urn with triumphal laurels, veil-draped pedestal and the serpents of Eternity, indicating the clock-face's rotating-rings, derives from a model of the 1760s by the architect/sculptor Gilles Paul Cauvet (d.1788) whose Recueil d'Ornements of 1777 was dedicated to Monsieur, Louis XVI's brother.
An ormolu-enriched marble clock of this model, with a movement by Jean-Andre Lepaute (maître 1759), is in the Musée du Louvre (see: Tardy, La Pendule Francaise, Louis XVI a nos Jours, 2me Partie, p. 289. Augustin Michel Henry (d. 1885), who adopted the name Lepaute in 1854, had held the appointment of Clockmaker to King Louis Philipppe (d. 1848)
An ormolu-enriched marble clock of this model, with a movement by Jean-Andre Lepaute (maître 1759), is in the Musée du Louvre (see: Tardy, La Pendule Francaise, Louis XVI a nos Jours, 2me Partie, p. 289. Augustin Michel Henry (d. 1885), who adopted the name Lepaute in 1854, had held the appointment of Clockmaker to King Louis Philipppe (d. 1848)