LORENZO DE RUGGIERO OF NAPOLI: A rare 17th Century Italian N...

Estimate

£10,000 - £20,000

LORENZO DE RUGGIERO OF NAPOLI: A rare 17th Century Italian Night Clock, the exquisite painted front depicting Apollo pursuing Daphne, the movement comprises a gut fusee block with an oversized great wheel driving a contrate wheel which then drives the verge escapement with a pendulum on a silk suspension, the Roman 1, 2 and 3 represents the quarters of the hour with an internal rolling hour system comprising one large wheel that rotates once every two hours, within are three smaller rotating wheels each set with four numbers for the hours. Housed within an ebonised and ormolu-mounted case (it is possible that the back glazed door may have been altered to house a candle instead of an oil lamp), standing approximately 60cm tall. Little is known about Lorenzo de Ruggiero but he is referenced as being a master clockmaker in Napoli who bequeathed his tools to Giacomo Antonio, his former slave, "The master clockmaker Lorenzo De Ruggiero willed his tools to his former slave Giacomo Antonio so that he could open his own workshop. Thus, at the beginning of the eighteenth century Naples’s slave population was an integral part of public and private society", Slavery and Construction at the Royal Palace of Caserta, Robin L. Thomas, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2019) 78 (2): 167–186. It is therefore presumed that Lorenzo de Ruggiero died around 1700 and the clock was made earlier, in the 1600s.