BRASS SPANDREL.
From dial of clock by Henry Massy (London), 1680, illustrated p. [159].

The design of the cherub with outspread wings was common enough in Italy, where children have served as models since Donatello. It became established as a form and was a favourite embellishment of the English stone-carver in the seventeenth century. Horace Walpole protested at its abuse by the contemporaries of Christopher Wren, and it can be found outside St. Paul's Cathedral and in many other London churches and over late Stuart doorways.

It was, therefore, nothing new; it was a pleasing spandrel ornament which appealed to the clockmaker as suitable to clock dials. It naturally received floriated additions, and both in its simpler form and in this later and more elaborate variation it appears on the spandrels of clock dials (see p. [167]).

It is interesting to find the clockmaker so conservative. Once the cherub found its way on to clocks, there it remained. It is in the clock at Windsor Castle which Henry VIII gave to Anne Boleyn, formerly at Strawberry Hill before Queen Victoria purchased it. In its first form on the spandrel it practically followed the simple woodcarver's design we illustrate, but with this difference: the triangle to be filled by the clockmaker in his spandrels, at each of the four corners of his dial, was exactly opposite to that of the woodcarver or the stone-carver where he made a bracket. The triangle in these cases stood on its apex. The clockmaker's triangle stood on its base. Hence it will be observed that a straight line drawn along the head of the cherub (p. [167]) finds itself level with the top of the two wings. The clockmaker modified this in his metal spandrel ornaments. He dropped the wings, so that the top of the cherub's head is the apex of the triangle and the tips of the two wings the base.

Later, the head, although still retained, was enveloped in floriated ornament and the cherub became unrecognizable. But the triangle is well filled.

We next come to a most interesting stage, coincident in time with the rebuilding of Hampton Court. The "Glorious Revolution" had become established and James II sent packing. The two cherubs holding up the Protestant crown would seem by its prevalence at this period to be a sort of symbolic record of events that were happening. Huguenot and Dutch metal-workers put their thoughts into form, and we find this William and Mary Protestant emblem on the clock-face (see p. [171]).

But we also find it on the stretcher of the walnut chair of the period (as illustrated, p. [171]). Nor is this all. Lambeth and Bristol delft dishes contribute their pæan in honour of the House of Orange. On some a crown is found, with the date 1690, the sole decoration of a plate some 9 inches in diameter. On others a crown is shown on a cushion, with the sceptre and orb beside it. These are all contemporary with other English delft dishes bearing crudely painted portraits of William and Mary crowned.