Les pendules au char, or, chariot pendulum clocks, first appeared in Germany in the 16th Century, but the trend truly caught on in France at the end of the 18th century and into the 19th. This format provided opportunity to portray the gods and goddess of antiquity going about their various affairs and mischief and fell neatly into the love of the antique at the time. This particular model depicting Telemachus and Minerva first appears in a drawing signed by the bronzier Jean-André Reiche and dated 1807 in the National Library in Paris (see P. Kjellberg, Encyclopédie de La Pendule Française du Moyen Age au XXe siècle, Paris, 1997, p. 417; also E. Niehüser, French Bronze Clocks, 1700-1830: A Study of the Figural Images, Atglen, PA, 1999, pp. 68-69). For a nearly identical example, see Christie's, Paris, 17 December 2003, lot 200.

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