Clock, 1600-1625

In the sixteenth-century, mechanical clocks represented the highest point of Western European technological ingenuity. They were owned by the wealthy and displayed as examples of scientific novelty. Despite this, they were not dependable time-keepers and people still relied on the movement of the sun and stars to determine the passage of time accurately. The clock on this example is a later replacement, but the construction of the piece, in which a mythical monster supports the dial, is common to other clocks of the period. It is also typical of sixteenth-century workmanship that the clock mechanism is concealed in the base and not in the figure itself. The monster, a griffin, would have opened its beak and flapped its wings as the hours struck. Only the development of the steam engine in the late eighteenth century ended the dominance of the mechanical clock in the world of Western technology.

Clock supported by an automated winged monster of gilded copper with traces of paint, on a base of gilded copper engraved with plants, snails and reptiles, set with three silvered copper dials. The base rests on four cast feet in the shape of pomegranates. The clock dial supported by the monster is a later replacement, and the mechanism for this clock may be as well.