Louis XV Period 18th Century Gilt Bronze Wall Clock With Crowned C

Gilt bronze table clock with "Crowned C" model of *St Germain Louis XV period XVIII th. The violin-shaped clock with rocaille decoration is topped with a cherub holding a bow and his quiver sitting on clouds and sunbeams symbolizing the sunrise. The sides of a moving shape are openworked with climbing flowers on a sky blue silk velvet background. Front decorated with a large openwork shell and delicately chiseled foliage scrolls. White enameled dial indicating the hours in Roman numerals and the minutes in Arabic numerals signed Festeau in Paris. Hallmark of the "crowned C" on the front right foot which attests to a tax on metals in force between 1745 and 1749. Original mercury gilding in very good condition, cleaned by our workshop. Original wire movement striking the hours and half-hours operated by its key. Parisian work from the Louis XV period. *Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain: Bronze-worker (1719 - 1791) He is probably the most famous Parisian bronze-worker of the mid-18th century. Active from 1742, he was admitted as a master in July 1748. He is best known for the creation of numerous clock cases and cartels that made his reputation, notably the cartel known as the Diana the Huntress (see an example preserved at the Louvre Museum), the clock supported by two Chinese (see a model of this type at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Lyon), as well as several clocks with animal themes, mainly elephants and rhinoceroses (example at the Louvre Museum). Around the beginning of the 1760s, he also played a key role in the revival of Parisian decorative arts and in the development of the neoclassical movement, notably by creating the so-called genius of Denmark clock based on a model by Augustin Pajou for Frederick V of Denmark (1765, preserved at the Amalienborg in Copenhagen). Saint-Germain created several clocks inspired by the theme of the Study, based on a model by Louis-Félix de La Rue (examples in the Louvre, the Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York).