Automaton clock in the form of an eagle

Mechanical automata, or self-moving figures, have been associated with European mechanical clocks from their earliest development. Unlike the clocks, which have the practical purpose of telling the time, automata were often made with the deliberate aim of inspiring awe in the beholder. Whether religious or secular in nature, there is something magical in the most domesticated of automata. By the early sixteenth century the artist Leonardo da Vinci would be engaged to design a clockwork-driven lion that reportedly greeted King Louis XII (1462–1515) of France during his triumphal entry into Milan in 1509 by lying down and opening its chest with its paw to release a shower of golden lilies, which were symbolic of both Florence and France.[1] The reputation of this lion was apparently such that when Louis XII’s successor, François I (1494–1547), made his formal visit as king to the banking city of Lyon in 1515, the colony of Florentine bankers commissioned a second automaton from Leonardo. This one greeted the king by walking and strewing the golden lilies.[2]



With the rise of Augsburg as the German clockmaking center during the sixteenth century, another series of automata paid tribute to the power of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperors. These automata were nefs in the form of warships that propelled themselves along a tabletop while shooting miniature cannons as tiny trumpeters and kettle drummers played a fanfare for a figure of the emperor. When in action they were doubtlessly calculated to promote a somewhat uncomfortable shiver in the spectator. Three of these vessels survive, one presided over by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500–1558) and two presided over by his grandson Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552–1612). Two of the automata incidentally incorporate a clock; all are attributed to the Augsburg clockmaker and maker of automata Hans Schlottheim (master in 1576), with contributions by the various anonymous craftsmen who made the cases and provided the sound.[3]



In the late sixteenth century a number of other clockmakers in Augsburg produced automata in combination with clocks. They were largely made with gilded-copper cases, often supporting automata in the form of a single animal or bird, or a human figure riding an animal. By the second decade of the seventeenth century, these figure clocks (lions, elephants, ostriches, dogs, and birds) were being made in quantity, their animated components of cast and gilded brass supported on wooden bases, sometimes darkened to look like ebony and sometimes made of the precious black wood. The names of the cabinetmakers who made the wooden bases are not known, but by the early seventeenth century those who worked in ebony had adopted special “EBEN” and Augsburg pinecone stamps,[4] as well as maker’s marks. Unfortunately, most of these maker’s marks have never been identified. The individual brass founders, too, remain anonymous, but a surviving record from 1588 indicates that only seven independent founders were permitted to work for clockmakers.[5] Nevertheless, by about 1600, these founders, whatever their number, had the capacity for serial production of the brass figures. Some, but not all, of the clockmakers who participated in this production signed their movements. Thus, we can identify, for example, the automaton clockwork by Nicholas Schmidt the Elder (master in 1576) and Carol (or Karl) Schmidt (master in 1614), both represented in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection, the latter by one of the popular rampant lion automata (see 29.52.15).[6]



The figure of the eagle on the Museum’s clock, with its wings spread in heraldic fashion, wears an imperial crown, grasps a scepter in its talons, and stands on a gilded ball supported by a circular plinth. The plinth is stepped and ornamented by a natural landscape that is inhabited by tiny figures, including a snail, a snake, and a lizard. The plinth that forms the top of the base for the clock, in turn, rests on a hexagonal brass plate that is engraved with lozenges, alternately plain and matte. The remainder of the base is veneered with ebony and has ebony moldings at the top and bottom of its six sides, five ornamented by rectangular ripple moldings, with turned ebony balusters applied to all six corners. The structure is supported on six brass feet. The sixth side of the case displays a circular silver dial with a single, sculptured-iron hand. The hours on the outer chapter ring are marked one–twelve, and the half hours are indicated by dots. The hours on the inner chapter ring (thirteen– twenty-four) begin at the seven o’clock position instead of the one o’clock—probably a way of using the clock to register Italian hours, which begin at sundown. A small dial on the top of the base and in front of the eagle registers the last quarter hour struck (one–four).



The spring-driven movement consists of three trains made of iron wheels that are mounted between two hexagonal brass plates, which are held apart by six pillars. The movement is wound from the underside of the base, and it strikes hours and quarters on two bells mounted on the back plate. The eagle’s scepter moves up and down when the clock strikes the hours; the bird originally opened and shut its beak and probably rolled its eyes when the clock struck the quarter hours.



As a free city of the Holy Roman Empire, Augsburg owed allegiance directly to the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperors. The eagle, an emblem of the Habsburgs, thus had special meaning for the city. The stiff heraldic pose of the bird with the crown and scepter was doubtlessly intended as a felicitous reminder of imperial patronage, a patronage that supported, among others, two of the best mathematicians/ astronomers of the age: Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) and Johannes Kepler (1571–1630). This eagle may plausibly be considered a close relative of the magnanimous imperial bird that showers coins upon the scientists of the court of Rudolf II, as depicted on the title page of the Tabulae Rudolphinae, the astronomical tables published in Ulm, Germany, in 1627 by Kepler (fig. 21). It may also be regarded as an evocative survivor of an era that has been described as the transitional period in which the quasi-magical worldview of the sixteenth century began to give way to the mechanical universe of the seventeenth.[7]



The connection between the clockwork movement and the automaton’s eyes is now missing, but it is possible that the eyes originally moved from side to side with the ticking of the clock. Probably in the second half of the seventeenth century, the original verge escapement and balance of the clock were replaced with a short and shoddily constructed pendulum. The suspension for the pendulum required a sizeable slot to be cut in one side of the case. In 1978, both the pendulum and the suspension were removed, and the slot was filled. At the same time, two trapezoidal brass plaques of relatively modern origin that were attached to the sides of the hour dial were removed and replaced with wooden panels to allow the mounting of the dial to more closely resemble the mounting of dials on other wooden bases in Augsburg figural clocks of the first half of the seventeenth century. In addition, the left rear foot was replaced by a cast of one of the originals.



It is not known when or where Mrs. Guggenheim acquired this clock. In contrast to the many lion and dog automata still in existence,[8] only one other eagle automaton is known, which is in the collection of the Mathematisch- Physikalischer Salon, Dresden.[9] The Dresden eagle is identical to the Museum’s piece but lacks the scepter. The base is ebony but differently shaped. In addition, the Dresden movement strikes only the hours and activates only the beak and eyes. Like the Museum’s automaton, it is unsigned.



Notes (For key to shortened references see bibliography in Vincent and Leopold, European Clocks and Watches in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015)



[1] For a more complete description, see Burke 2006.

[2] Garai 2007, pp. 11–23.

[3] The automata are now in the British Museum, London;the Musee National de la Renaissance, Ecouen; and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (the last most beautifully finished with painted sails and supplied with both musical and nautical sounds). See de Conihout et al. 2001.

[4] Himmelheber 1980.

[5] Groiss 1980, p. 71. For a discussion of the brass-founders’models, see Maurice 1976, vol. 1, pp. 111–18.

[6] Acc. nos. 29.52.13 and 29.52.15.

[7]See, for example, Yates 1984, pp. 219–20.