Table clock, France, ca. 1810 -1820, Mercury gilt bronze, Signed Sézille Palais Royal

France, c.1810 -1820
Table clock with maid
Gilded bronze with mercury, h. 59.5 x 40.5 x 13 cm
Signed on the dial “Sezille Palais Royal n°133 à Paris”

Similar to the prevailing taste of the Napoleonic era which envisaged a return to antiquity, the Empire Style was used for the decoration of furniture, architectural structures, furnishings, wallpaper, fabrics and furnishing accessories. The style envisaged a sober and classical return to order, embellished by the antiquarian habit referring to the recent archaeological discoveries of Herculaneum and Pompeii: the constant Roman and Hellenistic memory was celebrated through applications representing wreaths of laurel or oak, with imperial symbolism, mythological figures, sphinxes, muses, personifications and much more.
This watch organizes the mechanical case on a parallelepiped bearing structure, divided into two parts connected by a sinuous fret with flowers; the whole rests on the top on rounded feet decorated with a dense network of small flowers inscribed within a modular rhombus, culminating, in the attachment to the central body of the clock, with a theory of palmettes. The upper part of the parallelepiped body, inscribed with mythological figures like the ancient steles, encloses the latter with a frame of stylized palm leaves interspersed with discs of flowers, in turn accompanied, on the two vertical sides, by a lively triumph of plants . Considered the iconographic range used by bronzesmiths to decorate clocks, it is possible to recognize in the figurative mythological scene the muse of poetry and music, Calliope, accompanied by the attributes of the lyre and the laurel branch, used to pay homage to poets. The two winged geniuses who take turns in front of her carry rolls and plates on which to engrave the verses that the muse dictates daily to men; the prize for human intellect is underlined by the two similar crowns that the muse holds in her hands, depicting a snake biting its own tail. This symbol, which the medieval era will borrow from the Hellenistic-Roman environment of Gnosticism creating the figure of the ouroboros, metaphorically manifests the destination of the clock, being used to personify the eternal return of time and the cyclical nature of men's material life .
The case of the watch is enclosed in a zither, which is approached by a woman crowned with laurel; the top part has two heads of griffins in correspondence with the arms of the cithara, and a second female face crowned by a ring of petals/rays always alluding to the sublime elevation of poetry. On the right side of the instrument rests a lit torch accompanied by an inverted unlit torch, an allusion to present well-being, victor over the shortcomings of life, to which the bust of a philosopher on a disc also alludes. The dial is a porcelain bezel while the hands are Breuguet. Mechanism with "lever" escapement with pendulum with silk thread and "partiora" system striker, sounds at the passage of the hours and half-hours.

The signature on the clock, "Sezille Palais Royal n°133 à Paris", indicating the production manufactory, allows us to date the work between 1820 and 1841, the years in which Louis Sézille, watchmaker, worked in the ambit of the "Palais Royal” in Rue du Marché Neuf, Galerie de Pierre 133.