Watch

Nicolas Bernard

16th century · Gold, enamel · European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

A very few watchcases survive with this variety of openwork design of tour-de-force raised-and-dotted enamel. The dial, too, with black numerals on a pure white enamel chapter ring and a deep red basse-taille enamel center, is the product of a highly skilled artisan, who was almost certainly working in Paris about the middle of the seventeenth century. The pre-balance spring movement of the watch is signed Nicolas Bernard AParis. While there are several clockmakers named Bernard, or Benard, known to have been working in Paris in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, there is no record of a Nicolas Bernard before 1636, when a man by that name was made a master clockmaker there. By the time of his death in 1670, he had become a merchant clockmaker and a burgher of Paris.

Artist

Nicolas Bernard

Date

16th century

Medium

Gold, enamel

Culture

French, Paris

Department

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Credit line

Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917