Musical Clock

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.