A Louis XV Ormolu Mantel Clock Circa 1750

the enamelled dial with Roman and Arabic numerals signed Julien Leroy a Paris set within a drum-shaped case, surmounted by a seated female figure holding long floral swags and raised on the back of a bull flanked by the figures of Europa and a female companion, the voluted base cast with rockwork and foliate motifs.

The well-known allegory of the rape of Europa derives from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and depicts Jupiter, the father of the Gods, in the guise of a bull preparing to carry away the nymph Europa who was gathering flowers by a river bank.  An virtually identical example signed by Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain which had been in the Chateau de Saint Cloud and was later in the Tuileries, is in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, (OA 5168) illustrated in Ottomeyer, Pröschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, Vol. I, p. 125, pl. 2.8.8.  Saint-Germain also produced another version, some five years later, with a slightly different arrangement of the figures, including a figure of Cupid, and with a slightly more advanced base; illustrated Ottomeyer, et al, op.cit.  pl. 2.8.9.  Another version of this model was made by Robert Osmond, circa 1750 (ibid. pl. 2.8.7) and several versions are recorded: one in the J. Paul Getty Museum, illustrated, G. Wilson, Clocks in the J. Paul Getty Museum, no. 14, pp. 102 – 107; another is in the royal collection at Buckingham Palace, illustrated, Harris, de Bellaigue and Millar, Buckingham Palace, London, 1968, pl. 200).