Automaton Clock with a Pacing Lion in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2020

Title: Automaton Clock with Pacing Lion

Artist: Daniel Lotter

Date: ca. 1619

Culture: German, Augsburg

Medium: Silver (cast, partly gilded), bronze, ebony, enamel

Dimensions: 10 1/2 × 10 × 7 in. (26.7 × 25.4 × 17.8 cm)

Classification: Horology

Credit Line: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Conneticut

This royal animal with its gilded mane paces majestically on an ebony base. Originally, a mechanism connected to a quarter- and hour-striking movement caused the lion’s eyes to roll, its jaw to open, and its tongue to stick out—no doubt to the owner’s enchantment. The veneer bears the Augsburg cabinetmakers’ guild’s mark "eben," a guarantee of real ebony, a valuable tropical wood. The lion’s form was influenced by slightly earlier bronze statuettes made in Florence.

Text from: www3.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/770503