This French table clock in the Second Empire style, popularly known as “Mariscal”, was purchased for 150,000 pesetas from antique dealer Antonio Alonso Ojeda [1] on 19 March 1976, for the Governor’s office.

Two seated figures – a young woman reading and a young man drawing - wearing classical garments and made out of bluing bronze, are on either side of a cubic, gilded bronze base which supports the case with the clock face and movement. The rectangular pedestal is green marble with curved sides. The front is decorated with gilded bronze appliqués. The fretted plaque in the centre has a central rosette flanked by classic elements. Four-petal roses on the sides and garlands on the side sections. An embossed lyre with plant motifs on two cornucopias laced together are on the front of the base. Four flattened tapered feet.

The hour dial is a laurel wreath with the hour figures as black Roman numerals on circular cartouches. The inside of the clock face is not decorated. The hands are made out of bluing metal. Two rope mechanisms.

Parisian-style French movement. The wheel train with spring drive keeps the watch running for eight days. The escapement is pin-pallet and the regulator is a pendulum. The striking mechanism chimes the hours and half hours.

This depiction is based on the theme of L’emploi du Tiempo or Geoffrin pendulum. Marie-Thérèse Rodet, the wife of François Geoffrin, ran a leading salon for artists and politicians in Paris in the mid-18^th century. Madame Geoffrin’s will (dated in 1777) refers to a timepiece that represented l’emploi du temps. The case, in reality, was a sculpted copy of a portrait of her by painter Jean-Marc Nattier. Madame Geoffrin is depicted recumbent, with a book on her knees. The design became very popular and inspired another model in time, where the female figure was accompanied by a male one. From that moment onwards, the figures were identified as Study and Arts, according to Dominique Daguerre’s design using two figures created by Louis-Simon Boizot in 1780.

[1] With a shop in the new arcades in Ribera de Curtidores no. 12 in Madrid. The invoice is kept in the Curatorship Archives.

Amelia Aranda Huete