Mantel clock ("Pendule Clio")

Mantel clock ("Pendule Clio")

Jean-André Lepaute

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

French eighteenth-century clocks are among the most lavish ever made, requiring the collaboration of clockmakers, bronze founders, gilders, and others. Lepaute worked with the renowned sculptors Clodion, Augustin Pajou, and Jean-Antoine Houdon, who probably made the models for this clock. Like the Pendule Uranie (29.180.2), the model for this clock is mentioned in Jean-André Lepaute’s 1766 publication and described as the Pendule Clio (Muse of History).

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mantel clock ("Pendule Clio")Mantel clock ("Pendule Clio")Mantel clock ("Pendule Clio")Mantel clock ("Pendule Clio")Mantel clock ("Pendule Clio")

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.