Paris, 19th Century, Clock With Musician

Paris, 19th century
Clock with musician
Bronze gold mercury with bell and music box, cm 57 x 39 x 19

Elegant watch with music allegory in direct dialogue with the car case. A young woman, represented on the type of the dancing nymph or muse, raises a tambourine to the rhythm of music while the peplo that covers it is still caressed by the air tested by the movement. The percussion musical instrument, a clear semantic parallel to the passage of time offered by the clock in its deaf repetition of the leather beat, is accompanied by two other instruments resting on the case. A lyre with a tinted and decorated resonance, as the crowning of the two outer arms, presents a pair of cock heads, in ancient Greece the symbol of music. Even the small head surrounded by digital rays, placed as a solar protome of the device, denounces the refined iconographic context from which the bronzer has taken inspiration. The organological parenthesis is completed by a third instrument in which it is possible to recognize a thin bouzouki, a musical specimen of totally Greek imprint belonging to the family of the cordophons. Called in the Byzantine era pandoura or tamboura, this object met with a happy notoriety both in literary and material field, pride of the most capable musicians and experts in virtuosistic and fast pinching the strings. The instrument’s harmonic board, circular rather than teardrop, suggests the ancient date on which the artist chose to represent the scene.
The case of the watch, slightly off-center compared to the base, has a fine decoration in relief with a pair of mirror gyros placed on the sides of a lit torch and turned upwards, symbol of positivity. A similar decorative proposition is found in the tripartition of the base, enclosed between a flowery contrast of leaves and pretty petals that spring from them. In the centre, a basket of flowers enclosed in a beaded ferrule recalls the spiraling crown that encloses the glass of the watch. 

The indication on the case à Paris certifies the location of the laboratory. 

This watch is enriched by a glass bell with chime operated by separate key. 

The object is in good condition