Empire Mantel Clock - La Bibliotheque, Ormolu, France, Paris, circa 1820

Ormulu pendule with depiction of friendship and love Paris (Lepaute, Thomire) fire-gilt bronze Empire around 1815 Dimensions: H x W x D: 44 x 36 x 13 cm French pendulum movement with eight days duration. Thread suspension and lock disc striking movement with strike on bell on the half and full hour. White enamel dial with Roman hour numerals and Breguet hands. Signature: LePaute & Fils / Hrl. du Roi (Pierre-Basile Lepaute (1750 - 1843) with his son Pierre-Michel Lepaute (1785-1849); from 1811 in joint workshop). Description: The extremely high quality pendulum shown here takes up a profound theme: Friendship, which combines with love and can thereby outlast time and death. As it is typical for the epoch of classicism, personifications and symbols are taken from the fund of ancient mythology and art and then developed further. The main figure is a young woman in an antique, girded garment, standing barefoot and with crossed legs next to an altar, on which she is leaning with her left elbow. She gracefully bows her head towards a tempestuously approaching Cupid, grasps his right hand with her left and draws him to her bosom, the seat of the heart. The delicate ambivalence of flying towards and being held culminates in the trustingly intimate look that the two cast at each other. The young woman personifies friendship, the winged Cupid love. As a sign of their intimate connection, two burning hearts appear on the altar next to the two, framed by the puffed scarf, which are closely bound together by a chain of flowers. Next to them, on the altar slab, one can see an erected book with the title "Amitie" (French: amitie, friendship). Supporting the book is a pomegranate held by a ring of pomegranate flowers. The bursting seeds spill out of the cracked skin. Since ancient times, the pomegranate and its blossoms have been dedicated to the goddess Persephone, symbolizing the underworld and death, but also life and fertility. The myrtle interwoven in the pomegranate flower wreath of "friendship" also has a far-reaching symbolic power: the plant was dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite, stands for virginity, and was and is therefore obligatory in the bridal wreath...

Mantel Clock "Atala and Chactas" Paris Bronze (fire-gilt and patinated), enamel Empire around 1810 Dimensions: H x W x D: 40 x 32 x 11 cm Description: Very rare and extremely high quality French mantel clock, so-called Pendule Au Bon Sauvage. Depicted are scenes from the love story "Atala or the love of two savages in the desert" written by Francois René Vicomte de Chateaubriand in 1801. At the beginning of the 19th century, this was probably the most famous love story in Europe, but today it has been forgotten. The story, set in present-day Louisiana (USA), is roughly rewritten about the forbidden love between Chactas, a young Indian, and Atala, the beautiful daughter of a Spaniard. Chactas is captured in a battle between two Indian tribes, chained to a palm tree and is to be sacrificed. Atala wants to save his life and convert him to Christianity. She unties him from the palm tree at night and they flee together into the wilderness of North America. Their love for each other grows stronger and stronger and they have prospects for a future together. The story takes a tragic turn when Atala, who must remain a virgin due to a vow made by her mother, can no longer withstand the conflict of her feelings and commits suicide. The main group of characters thus shows Chacta's liberation through Atala. Atala is leaning against a pile of logs. The animal fur thrown over the logs and the weapons leaning against the stack on the right give the impression of a night camp. The bronze is of rarely beautiful quality, finely chiselled and makes the scene appear very lively. The contrast of fire-gilded and patinated bronze adds tension to the composition. In the base we see the Entombment as the end of the tragic love story. This bronze work is also very detailed, the interplay of bright and matt gilding makes the flat relief appear much deeper than it is. The depiction of the mantel clock presented here shows that the exotic was only known from stories and that the bronzier had his own ideas about the appearance of this distant world. The Indian, for example, has very European facial features and his skin was not black in reality, of course. The palm tree was also certainly not found in the North American wilderness. The heart of the clock is a French pendulum movement, integrated into the wooden pile, with an eight-day power reserve and a lock plate striking a bell on the half and full hour. The pendulum is suspended on a thread, typical of the period. The classically shaped hands, so-called Breguet hands, are also typical of the time. The enamelled dial has black Roman hour numerals, Arabic quarter hours and bears the signature: Le Roy hr. de Madame A PARIS. Interesting facts: The period from 1795 to about 1815 saw the creation of probably the most spectacular group of bronzes: The "Au bon Sauvage" pendulums - depictions of the "Noble Savage". Today's viewers react to these objects with both fascination and irritation. Enthusiastic on the one hand about the obvious quality of the detailed bronzes and the allure of the exotic, on the other hand distanced and cautious because of the possible discrimination that is suspected behind them. The ambivalence of this feeling motivates the search for the conditions of origin of these pendulums. Europeans found their new ideal of the natural man primarily in fictional and realistic travelogues about the Indians of North America...

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