Clock "Flora", allegory of spring
Applied Arts
2020.10.22.4.AA.DC.C1815.FR
Description
Borne (Milestone) type bronze libary clock representing a young woman (Flora) dressed in an Empire tunic style and holding in her right hand a flowers wreath and in her left hand a rose that she took from a bouquet placed on the clock where the clock face, embellished with guilloche, is housed. On the other side are the attributes of the garden represented by a shovel and a rake. The piedestal of the clock is composed of a rectangular base adorned with an antique scene decoration representing a soldier at rest (possibly Mars) and two nymphs.The clock in the interior design of the 19th century becomes a essential piece of the bourgeois interiror. It turn into a highly decorative object, adorned with a multitude of scenes and made mainly in gilded bronze. From the end of the 18th century, clockmaker artists rose up against classical rigidity and the beauty standard. They express their preference for subjects closer to their time and initiate a new style exalting more realistic scenes such as scenes of military battles, or inspired by Empire style monuments. Gradually emotion, sensitivity, imagination and the fantastic are manifested on the clocks until its apoteosis during the Romantic period. Under the French Restoration, bronzemakers took a prominent place in the art of clockmaking. They translate with virtuosity anecdotal scenes or exotic scenes.
Materials
BronzeSteel