Mantel clock

Charles Dutertre

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

About ten allegorical clocks of this model, personifying Love and Friendship probably created by the marchand mercier Dominique Daguerre (d. 1796), are known today. Records of the Sèvres porcelain manufactory indicate that twenty-three columns suitable for clock cases were supplied to Daguerre between 1772 and 1791. Holding two hearts in one hand, the female figure represents Friendship while she originally held in her other hand a portrait medallion, now missing. The putto on the other side of the column, personifying Love, plays with a dog that is the symbol of Fidelity. A colored drawing for a similar clock is in the Museum’s collection (60.692.7). One of a group of drawings that was sent to Albert, Duke of Sachsen-Teschen, and his wife Maria-Christina, a sister of Marie Antoinette, joint governors of the Low Countries from 1780 to 1792, they probably served as a sort of sale catalogue.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art