Clockmaker PILLARD a TROYES (active 18th/19th century), Mantel clock with cupid and female figure

Gilded bronze, enamel, glass, steel; height 28 cm, width 31 cm, depth 11.5 cm.
France, Troyes, late 18th century.
Lit. by Giampiero Negretti, Paolo De Vecchi, Clocks. Collections, Warsaw, 1997, p. 120
Base on an elongated rectangular plan with chamfered corners, on 4 spool legs. On the front, a relief with a scene featuring winged putti busy with work inside an alchemical atelier(?) - with a fire supported by a bellows in a furnace under an alembic; visible tools, vessels, retorts, scales, mortars, etc. Higher up on the base - in a rectangular case with the form of an altar - placed a typical Parisian mechanism - with an 8-day winding and quarter-hour strike; on the front corners of the altar - columns ending in animal paws and topped with Egyptian heads. White-enameled dial, with Roman hour and Arabic minute divisions; at the bottom the signature of the clockmaker: "Pillard à Troyes". On the left - on a three-legged stool - a figure of a winged cupid climbing up to activate with a crank a machine standing in the finial of the case. On the right - the figure of a woman in an antique robe, supported by her right arm on the altar. The key and pendulum are included.