Automaton Clock in the Form of Urania in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2020

Title: Automaton clock in the form of Urania

Maker: Paullus Schiller (German, 1583–1634)

Date: ca. 1620–30

Culture: German, Nuremberg

Medium: Case: partly gilded and partly silvered brass, copper with traces of silver, ebony, and ebony veneer; Movement: gilded brass and partly blued steel

Dimensions: Overall (confirmed): 8 1/4 × 9 1/2 × 6 1/4 in. (21 × 24.1 × 15.9 cm)

Classification: Horology

Credit Line: Purchase, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Acquisitions Fund, 2015

Accession Number: 2015.7

The muse of astrology and symbol of love, Urania, reclines atop the ebonized case, which hides a winding key in a drawer on the right side. She turns her head at the hour and lifts her pointer toward a horizontal dial mounted on a sphere. The movement’s refinement would have invited viewers to inspect it closely, and small marvels like this appeared both as table decorations and in the Kunstkammer. Urania is an appropriate subject for an automaton made in Nuremberg, a city that already had an astronomical observatory at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Text from: www3.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/679525