Fine, antique and massive French Restoration clock by Leroy given by the Duchesse de Berry to Louis Lafitte artist and First designer of the Kings Cabinet. The clock, the subject being that of a scholar and warrior in the Royal service. The superb ormolu figure to the left of the clock, dressed in classical clothes, holding a tablet with a flaming torch and in the other hand a wand of office, is clearly a scholar and advisor to the Royal family, who are seen in the base frieze of the clock. Here there are two figures sitting in thrones while the subject of the clock is addressing them. There are trophies of war to the bottom left of the frieze and scrolls to the bottom right. Below the dial is a fine applied mount of a baiting swan among foliage of laurel and forget-me-not and to the right of the clock is a lyre surmounted by a fine mask with the suns rays, this motif is echoed in the sprandrel corners above the dial. The fine white convex enamel dial is surrounded by an ormolu bezel of Amthemion and forget me not flowers. The dial is signed Leroy a Paris and has blued steel Breguet style moon hands. The 8 day movement with silk suspension and striking the hours and halves on a bell by means of countwheel strike. Movement dated December 1826. Below the dial is a fine enscription which reads "Donne par S. A. R. Madame, Duchesse de Berry a Mr Lafitte 1er. Dessinateur du Cabinet du Roi". Louis Lafitte had painted her Chateau and may have done several commissions for her. France dated December 1826. 28 inches high by 18.5 inches wide by 6 inches deep ( 70 cm by 46.25 cm by 15 cm). Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile, duchess de Berry, (born Nov. 5, 1798, Caserta, Italy—died April 16, 1870, Brunnsee, Austria), daughter of Francis I of the Two Sicilies, who in 1832 staged a brief rebellion in western France against the king, Louis-Philippe, in a vain attempt to gain the crown for her son, Henri Dieudonné, comte de Chambord. Her husband, the Duc de Berry, a son of Charles X of France, had been assassinated in 1820. When Charles was overthrown in 1830, she tried to secure the succession for her son but was forced into exile. In 1832, disguised as a peasant, she crossed the French border from Italy and made her way to the Vendée, where she succeeded in instigating a brief but abortive insurrection (June 1832). She was arrested in Nantes November 7 and imprisoned at Blaye but was freed in July 1833 with the discovery of her recent marriage to an obscure Italian nobleman, Count Ettore Lucchesi-Palli, an act that exempted her from the French throne. She lived in Austria and Italy until her death. Louis Lafitte 1767-1828. A student of both the painter Jean-Baptiste Regnault and the printmaker Gilles Demarteau, Louis Lafitte won the Prix de Rome in 1791 with a painting of The Return of Regulus to Carthage. (He was, in fact, the last student sent to the French Academy in Rome during the reign of Louis XVI.) In Italy, he joined a group of pensionnaires that included Anne-Louis Girodet, Charles Meynier, François-Xavier Fabre and Jacques Réattu, and with them spent most of the period of the Terror living and studying in Rome, Florence and Naples. Having made his Salon debut in 1791, when he exhibited a number of drawings, he continued to exhibit there regularly after his return from Rome in 1796 and until 1817. Awarded one of the second prizes in the great concours de l’an II, held in the Year II of the Republic in 1793-1794, Lafitte enjoyed an active and varied career. He participated in the decoration of the dining room at Malmaison, to which he contributed a series of allegorical frescoes, and also designed wallpaper for the chateau, including several on the subject of Psyche. Appointed dessinateur du cabinet du roi by Louis XVIII in 1815, Lafitte also produced a number of designs for Sèvres porcelain and for the goldsmith Charles Cahier, and between 1802 and 1815 provided a series of designs for medals commemorating Napoleon and the important events of the Empire, commissioned by Baron Dominique-Vivant Denon as Director of the Mint. While the works that Lafitte exhibited at the Salon included history paintings and portraits, as well as an occasional landscape, the majority of his submissions were highly finished drawings. These were of religious and allegorical scenes, as well as history subjects and portraits, and earned the artist a considerable reputation. Many of his drawings were intended as designs for book illustrations or prints, often with specific Revolutionary themes. Lafitte also produced a superb series of drawings for the new Republican calendar, decreed by the Convention in 1793, with each month represented by an allegorical female figure. During the Restoration, Lafitte was appointed dessinateur du cabinet du roi by Charles X, and in this capacity produced a number of large and highly finished drawings of The Coronation of Charles X, now in the Louvre. Other drawings by Lafitte are today in the museums of Angers, Montpellier, Pontoise and Rouen, as well as in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.