Page 204 - Beholding Liberty!
P. 204
204 BEHOLDING LIBERTY!
ΙΙ.2.3
French studio
Personification of the revolted Greece, ca. 1825-30
table clock of gilded bronze, height 56 cm
inscribed (stamps): Gillion / Etablissement de Paris – Pons (on apparatus) Hellenic Parliament Art Collection, inv. n. 872
AN EXCELLENT EXAMPLE OF THE ART of watchmaking, with a mechanism made in Paris by Honoré Pons.
It features a personification of Greece (Hellas), in elaborate dress and fine detail. Hellas gazes up- wards, her left arm raised; her right arm rests on a column decorated with floral patterns; one foot rests on a spolio and the other on Turkish symbols.
This motif of Hellas, a personification of Greece, al- ready familiar from Choiseul-Gouffier [cat. no Ι.1.2] and related images, and renewed over the course of the War by Eugène Delacroix’s iconic works, such as Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi (1826), is seen in a very interesting version here. Greece has bro- ken the shackles and, drawing on its historical past (the column and the ruins by her right foot), shakes off the Ottoman yoke (the crescent by her left foot). Rebellious Greece symbolises here the nation’s re- naissance and historical perspective.
