Clock with Chronos

Object belonging

One's own

Category

Bronze sculpture

City

Rome

Location

Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia

Specific location

Room 17

Inventory

PV 10660

Material and technique

Bronze, gilding

Author

attributed to Balthasar Permoser (1651-1732)

Dating

c. 1675-1680

Dimensions

25 x 24.5 x 10 cm.; 12.45 x 19.1 cm. (base)

Origin

Palazzo Doria al Corso (1961)

Image copyright

SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Short description

Bernini produced innumerable designs for furniture, objets d’art and fabrics for churches and palaces, including several ideas for clocks. A Bernini drawing formerly held by the antique dealer Fallani, in Rome, depicted Time as an old, bearded, though strong man, brandishing a scythe and holding a large clock. Time is depicted in the same manner in this bronze, though the posture of the body is different: windswept in the act of flight, the large swirling loincloth adds movement, covering part of his body and serving to hold him upright. The same idea for the bronze appears in Bernini’s drawings for the large marble group, Truth, which ought to have featured a statue of Time (Galleria Borghese, 1642-52), and in the designs for the mirror of Queen Christina of Sweden, with the statue of Time placed at the top (c. 1662). Many drawings of both works remain, documenting their complete compositions. In 1976 the gilded Palazzo Venezia bronze was compared to another, very similar, work depicting Time in Flight over the Earth, which sat on top of a large and highly elaborate clock belonging to a private collection, an excellent piece made using pietre dure as was the practice in Florence. In 1988 Dreyer studied the Florence clock, believing Giovan Battista Foggini to have conceived the whole piece, but identifying the artist of the Time statuette, as well as that of Palazzo Venezia, as Balthasar Permoser.

Pietro Cannata 

Bibliography

A. Santangelo, Notiziario acquisti, in "Bollettino d'Arte", XLVI, 1961, p. 364; P. Dreyer, Ein unbekanntes Uhrengehäuse aus den Florentiner Werkstätten um 1700, in "Kunst des Barock in der Toskana: Studien zur Kunst unter den letzten Medici", München 1976, pp. 211-212 no. 11; G. Fusconi, Disegni decorativi del barocco romano, Rome 1986, no. 37 p.49; R. Valeriani, Gli Spagna, in A. Gonzalez-Palacios (ed.), L'oro di Valadier: un genio nella Roma del Settecento, exh. cat., Rome 1997, p. 250; P. Dreyer in A. Giusti (ed.), Splendori di pietre dure. L'Arte di Corte nella Firenze dei Granduchi, exh. cat., Florence 1988, no. 39 p. 164.