This extraordinary object was born of a collaboration between the French clockmaker to King Louis XVI, Jean-Baptiste Lepaute, and the highly inventive French sculptor Clodion. Made for the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart, it is the only known example of an eighteenth-century timepiece combined with terracotta sculpture.
With outstretched limbs, the nymphs flout their role as buttresses for the central pillar. Appearing in different degrees of undress, they prance clockwise around the timepiece. Clodion, who studied ancient statuary in Rome, presents the nymphs in a way that recalls classical depictions of the mythological Three Graces. The circular momentum of their dance, suggested by the billowing draperies, proceeds in unison with the rhythm of the clock’s pendulum and the rotation of its dial in a horizontal plane. The clock chimes every fifteen minutes.
The Dance of Time: Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock
Jean-Baptiste Lepaute, clockmaker to Louis XVI, worked in close collaboration with Claude Michel Clodion, one of the most inventive and technically gifted sculptors of his time, to create this unique clock. Clodion was trained in Rome, where he studied classical art. Here, he sculpted three semi-draped nymphs dancing around a column, perhaps the three Horae (hours), who personify the passage of time in Greek mythology. They support Lepaute’s complex pendulum clock with a rotating annual dial meant to be admired through a transparent glass globe. Lepaute and Clodion created this extraordinary piece for its first owner, the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart.
Source: Vignon, Charlotte. The Frick Collection Decorative Arts Handbook. New York: The Frick Collection/Scala, 2015.
