Lot 165
165
AN ORMOLU TABLE-CLOCK
AN ORMOLU TABLE-CLOCK
AN ORMOLU TABLE-CLOCK
6 More
AN ORMOLU TABLE-CLOCK
9 More
AN ORMOLU TABLE-CLOCK

THE MOVEMENT FRENCH, 16TH CENTURY AND THE CASE BY THE FRENCH CLOCKMAKER MARIE, LE PUY, LATE 17TH OR EARLY 18TH CENTURY

Details
AN ORMOLU TABLE-CLOCK
THE MOVEMENT FRENCH, 16TH CENTURY AND THE CASE BY THE FRENCH CLOCKMAKER MARIE, LE PUY, LATE 17TH OR EARLY 18TH CENTURY
the case of drum form with pierced top engraved with trailing folage and a brazier; engraved around the band with Classical Roman gods and goddesses set within an arcade including, Venus, Diana and Mercury, on dolphin feet; the underside engraved with a coat-of-arms; the inside with three herm figures, the reverse of the base with the spurious signature and date ‘G.D.MARIE.AV.PVY / 1561’
1 ¾ in. (4.5 cm.) high
2 ¼ in. (6 cm.) diameter
Provenance
Baron Édouard de Rothschild (1868-1949), in the Boudoir vert sur la cour, hôtel Saint-Florentin, Paris.
Confiscated from the above by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg following the Nazi occupation of France in May 1940.
Recovered by the Monuments Fine Arts and Archives Section from Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany, and transferred to the Munich Central Collecting Point, 3 September 1945 (MCCP no. 7951/40).
Returned to France on 11 July 1946 and restituted to the Rothschild family.
By descent to the present owners.
Literature
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Tardy, Dictionnaire des horlogers français, Paris, 1972, vol. II, pp. 433-434.
Tardy, La pendule française dans le monde. Ire partie. Des origines à la transition Louis XV-Louis XVI, Paris, 1987, pp. 69, 75.

Lot Essay

Interestingly, the beautiful mechanism of this table clock, encircled by three finely chiselled herm figures, is typical of the French Renaissance, but the case of the drum and the base with dolphins are later. Dismantling the clock reveals the signature of a certain Marie, active in the city of Le Puy-en-Velay, and the spurious date 1561 on the reverse of the base. A person named 'Marie' was listed as an engraver and counterfeiter in Langeac, west of Le Puy. He was hanged for his misdeeds in Le Puy in 1712. This person could be the clockmaker of the present lot (see Tardy, 1972).

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