Getty Museum

Musical Clock

Date

case about 1785–1790; movements about 1780

Medium

Marble; gilt-bronze mounts; enameled metal; glass; silk; brass clock and musical carillon movements

Culture

Italian and Swiss

Department

Decorative Arts

Institution

Getty Museum

The design of this large, architectonic clock case and its neo-classical ornament were inspired by well-known monuments, both ancient and modern, in the city of Rome. Its pseudo-façade echoes ancient Roman triumphal arches, with gilt-bronze figures of chained slaves, as well as the entrance portico to the Pio Clementine Museum in the Vatican, which opened in 1773. The spear-welding female figure seated above the flat entablature replicates, in miniature, an actual urban antique statute in porphyry that personified the city of Rome. The case protects and encloses a pendulum clock movement and a single-roller musical movement that plays nine separate tunes on a ten-bell carillon. When operational, the sounds of the chimes could be heard through silk-covered apertures in the marble case.

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