aeide-thea:dictionnaire-infernal:Memento Mori watch owned by Mary, Queen of Scots. 16th century. Eng
aeide-thea:dictionnaire-infernal:Memento Mori watch owned by Mary, Queen of Scots. 16th century. Engraved along the base of the skull is a verse from Horace: “Pale death visits with impartial foot the cottages of the poor and the castles of the rich.“ OP’s caption misidentifies this very interesting piece! i initially grew suspicious because the visible portion of the inscription along the base of the skull is quite clearly in christo omnes uiuificabūtur, or ‘in christ all will be restored to life,’ which forms no part of the quote OP cites and certainly is nothing a pre-christian latin poet would have written—horace died in 8 BC, and while i don’t pretend to be an expert on jesus, wikipedia says scholarly consensus sets his date of birth between 6 and 4 BC. so unless we’re going to claim a gift of anachronistic prophecy for horace in the way some people like to for vergil, this is clearly not horace’s writing. however! what it is is a thoroughly googleable quote: what we’re looking at here is 1 corinthians 15:22 as rendered in the vulgate, et sicut in Adam omnes moriuntur ita et in Christo omnes vivificabuntur. which is the inscription on the 17th-century montre en forme de tête de mort by genevan watchmaker jean rousseau (grandfather of the more famous jean-jacques!), now in the collection of the louvre; the listing on the museum’s website has more, higher-quality pictures of what is without question a very beautiful, very fascinating objet d'art, and equally without question the selfsame one pictured here. ⸻ that said, the OP wasn’t inventing things out of whole cloth: a memento mori watch associated with mary, queen of scots, which features the quotation described, does exist. in fact, there seem to have been multiple such watches, at least one of which is now in the collection of, and on display in, the worshipful company of clockmakers’ museum in london. their website provides some nicely clear images of watch and accompanying leather case: tumblr’s rendering is of course fuzzier, but i think it’s still clear that (a) this is not the same watch as the first, if you pay careful attention to the details of the decoration; and that (b) this one, unlike the other, is visibly engraved with the quote OP mentions: around its forehead you can make out pallida · mors · æquo · pulsat · pede · pauperum · tabernas… before the curve of the skull conceals the rest. ⸻ so! multiple very neat death’s-head watches. the one in the louvre seems to have traveled from geneva (where it was made) to its current home in paris by way of besançon, which is logical enough from a geographical perspective; i wasn’t able to find any information about owners before the penultimate collector, or about the original commissioner, although i suppose it’s always possible a master watchmaker might have produced something like this of his own accord as a showpiece, to be displayed in his shop rather than sold? the one in london is inscribed ‘moysant, blois,’ and the only real conjecture as to its provenance i found was this admittedly very fanciful confection: the idea that perhaps mary stuart, then living in orléans, commissioned the piece from a watchmaker in the next town over, in somewhat-macabre memory of her dead husband, and brought it back with her to scotland and thence to england, is a pleasingly tidy fantasy! unfortunately it seems to be just that, as the museum’s description of the watch dates it to the ‘late 18th century or early 19th century,’ well after the former queen’s execution in 1587. -- source link
#historical#functional art#jewellery#fact checking