Great Clock "corinne At Cape Miseno" 1840

An important clock in finely chased and mercury-gilded bronze, made around 1840, during the reign of Charles X. It is adorned with a large sculpture in the round, representing a female figure inspired by Corinne, the emblematic heroine of Madame de Staël's novel *Corinne, or Italy*. This romantic iconography directly echoes the theme popularized by the painter François Gérard, notably in his 1825 work, where Corinne embodies genius, poetry, and artistic inspiration.

Seated atop Cape Miseno, Corinne seems suspended outside of time. Her posture, both supple and meditative, evokes the precise moment when thought becomes poetry. With her torso slightly inclined and her right hand raised in a gesture of oratory, she embodies the ancient muse, the one who unites intelligence with grace.

The finely modeled drapery clings to the body with an almost musical fluidity. The folds cascade down in regular folds, reminiscent of Greco-Roman statuary, while the head, turned towards the horizon, suggests a melancholic contemplation of fate and the passage of time—a theme reinforced by the discreet yet central presence of the dial.

Corinne sits beside a broken antique column, an eloquent symbol of past civilizations and the dialogue between ruin and memory. This column serves as a setting for the clockwork mechanism, integrating mechanical time into the sculptural narrative. Beside her, a richly ornamented lyre evokes poetry, the arts, and harmony, attributes inseparable from the figure depicted. The powerfully structured rectangular base is decorated with a finely detailed bas-relief frieze: scrolls, palmettes, and symmetrical motifs are arranged with an architectural rigor inspired by classical antiquity.

Original mechanism unaltered, silk thread suspension, striking the hours and half-hours on an antique bell.


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