A Large Louis XVI Style Carved Giltwood Clock and Barometer Set

Description

A Large and Important Louis XVI Style Carved Giltwood Clock and Barometer Set.

This large and unusual clock and barometer each have elaborately carved giltwood and gesso cases featuring expressive putto herm figures with bifurcated tails and floral crowns, above circular dials, set within architectural lower sections, carved with acanthus scrolls and cornucopia issuing flowers, the putti holding aloft branches of laurel leaves, flanking a torch en flambeau.

Each with circular enamel dials, the clock with Roman and Arabic numerals and pierced scrolled hands. The companion barometer with indications for the weather and inscribed ‘BAROMÈTRE / SELON TORRICELLI’.

The striking cases with their central putto figures are inspired by several eighteenth-century designs, perhaps most closely an engraving by Jean-François Forty in his ‘Oeuvres de Sculpture en Bronze’, 1780. Examples of the designs were understood to never have been executed in the eighteenth century, however almost certainly influenced those in nineteenth as the volume later became a part of the collection of the renowned bronzier Denière.

French, Circa 1860.