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Artistic Interpretations of Time
"The weight that drives the clock of commonwealth should be the force of a lively intellect."
-- Daniel Caspar von Lohenstein, 17th century
Clocks were perhaps the most marvelous technological achievements of the early modern period, and European rulers treasured them. As courts competed for technical supremacy, patrons encouraged innovations in their mechanical technology. As much display pieces and astronomical instruments as timekeepers, the most valued clocks expressed the advanced character of their interior mechanisms through splendidly decorated cases and complex dials.
Self-moving machines stood for more than technical progress. Practitioners of the "new science" embraced clockwork metaphors for society, the self, and the universe. They linked astronomical clocks to notions of a divinely ordered cosmos that was reflected in human hierarchies. Clocks also served as allegories of rulership from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. A disciplined society ran with the regularity of a clock, and the devices had been associated with wisdom, temperance, and prudence -- virtues necessary for the ruler -- since the fifteenth century. Given these symbolic resonances, it is no wonder that princes commissioned elaborate clocks for their Kunstkammer collections. |