# Celestial Globe with Clockwork > Gerhard Emmoser - 1579 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/gerhard-emmoser/emmoser-celestial-globe-clockwork-met/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-02 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Gerhard Emmoser - **Date:** 1579 - **Medium:** Case: partially gilded silver and gilded brass; movement: brass and steel - **Dimensions:** 27.3 x 20.3 x 19.1 cm (10 3/4 x 8 x 7 1/2 in) overall without the clockwork mechanism, weight 2450 g; globe diameter 14 cm (5 1/2 in); clockwork mechanism alone weighs 1000 g - **Object type:** Clocks and instruments - **Period:** Northern Mannerist, Habsburg court, 16th century - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gallery 520 (European Sculpture and Decorative Arts) - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A silver-and-gilt-brass globe engraved with the constellations, carried on the back of a large silver figure of the winged horse Pegasus, with a clockwork movement inside that once turned the sphere and moved a small gilt sun along its engraved ecliptic. Made in Vienna in 1579 by Gerhard Emmoser, Imperial Clockmaker to the Habsburg court, it is identified in the 1607-1611 inventory of Emperor Rudolf II's Prague Kunstkammer, one of the greatest princely collections of scientific instruments and automata ever assembled.After that its trail goes dark for well over a century. It resurfaces in Stockholm in the collection of the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden by 1652, almost certainly among the plunder Swedish troops carried out of Prague Castle in 1648, then vanishes again until a Paris estate sale in 1770 and a repair inscription of 1781. How it crossed the following 136 years to reach J. Pierpont Morgan, who gave it to the Metropolitan Museum in 1917, is not recorded in any source consulted here.What survives is a working demonstration of how a Renaissance court fused astronomy with princely display: a scientific instrument built to the accuracy of a working clock and the splendor of a goldsmith's masterpiece, mounted on a mythological beast chosen, the Museum's own curators argue, because Pegasus stood for the wings of the human mind lifting the science of astronomy. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1579** Made by Gerhard Emmoser, Imperial Clockmaker, Vienna `[documented]` (origin) Dated 1579 by the Metropolitan Museum's own cataloguing, three years into Rudolf II's reign. No commission record survives naming an original patron. - **1579-1607** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner or location is documented between the globe's manufacture and its identification in Rudolf II's Kunstkammer inventory. - **1607-1611** Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Prague Kunstkammer `[documented]` (inventory) Identified from a description in the Kunstkammer inventory compiled by imperial antiquarian Daniel Froeschl between 1607 and 1611; the manuscript survives in the Princely Library of Liechtenstein, Vaduz. - **1611-1652** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No specific document for this object bridges the inventory of 1607-1611 and Queen Christina's recorded ownership by 1652, though the 1648 Swedish sack of Prague Castle is well documented as the general mechanism by which much of Rudolf II's Kunstkammer reached Sweden. - **by 1652-1654** Queen Christina of Sweden `[documented]` (ownership) Recorded in the Metropolitan Museum's own catalogue note as in Christina's collection by 1652, two years before her abdication. - **1654-1770** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, dealer or location is documented across the roughly 116 years between Christina's abdication and the globe's reappearance in Paris. - **1770** Avocat Fortier, conseiller du roi `[documented]` (sale) The globe reappeared on 20 April 1770 at the Paris sale of the collection of Avocat Fortier. No sale price is recorded in the sources consulted. - **1770-1781** Unknown (in Paris) `[documented]` (repair) An inscription inside the globe dated 15 May 1781 records a repair by the Paris clockmaker Gautrin, probably Pierre-Laurent Gautrin (d. 1823), establishing the globe was in Paris at that date even though the owner who commissioned the repair is not named. - **1781-1917** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No dealer or collector is identified between the 1781 repair and J. Pierpont Morgan's ownership, a gap of roughly 136 years. - **by 1913-1917** J. Pierpont Morgan estate `[documented]` (bequest) Morgan died in 1913; the gift to the Metropolitan Museum was completed in 1917, as part of a large group of European clocks and watches from his collection carrying consecutive accession numbers in the 17.190 series. - **1917-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (acquisition) Accession 17.190.636, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, credited Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917. Shown in "The Luxury of Time" (2015-16) and "Making Marvels" (2019-20). ## Open questions - Who first commissioned or received the 1579 globe? No contract, payment or correspondence naming an original patron has surfaced; its documented history begins only with its identification in Rudolf II's own Kunstkammer inventory of 1607-1611. - Does the clockwork still function, or has it been arrested for conservation? The Museum's own text says the globe 'originally rotated', in the past tense, but no source consulted for this record states its present mechanical condition directly. - Where was the globe between about 1652, when it is recorded in Queen Christina of Sweden's collection, and 20 April 1770, when it reappeared at the Avocat Fortier sale in Paris? No owner is documented across that roughly 118-year gap. - Who owned the globe between the Gautrin repair inscription of 15 May 1781 and J. Pierpont Morgan's acquisition of it before his death in 1913? No dealer or intermediate collector is identified in any source consulted for this record. - What exactly does the subsidiary dial mounted on the horizon-ring arm display? Secondary summaries of the Museum's catalogue describe separate hour and calendar functions, but this could not be verified against the Museum's own full catalogue text during research for this record. - When and where was Gerhard Emmoser born? Only his active career, from 1556 to his death in 1584, is documented in the sources consulted; a single unverified secondary source gives Heidelberg, which this record has not been able to confirm. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Collection API, object record 193606 (Celestial globe with clockwork, accession 17.190.636). - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art, object page for Gerhard Emmoser, Celestial globe with clockwork, accession 17.190.636: catalogue note covering the maker's biography, the mechanism, the Froeschl-inventoried identification in Rudolf II's Prague Kunstkammer (1607-1611), the Christina of Sweden ownership by 1652, the 20 April 1770 Fortier sale in Paris, and the 1781 repair inscription naming a clockmaker Gautrin. Returned HTTP 429 on repeated direct fetch during initial research (apparently a shared rate limit with the image host after 31 images were pulled from images.metmuseum.org in the same session); confirmed by direct read via the in-app browser during the provenance pass, 2026-09-02, after the rate limit cleared. The provenance facts and biography in this record match the page's own text; the only correction made against it is Imser's death date (the page says active 1531-1562, probably dead by 1570, not 1557 as an earlier draft of this record had it). - [3] Metropolitan Museum of Art, gallery checklist and exhibition text for "The Luxury of Time: European Clocks and Watches", Wrightsman Exhibition Gallery (Gallery 521), 16 November 2015 - 27 March 2016, organized by Elizabeth Sullivan and Clare Vincent, exhibition text by Elizabeth Sullivan. - [4] Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Making Marvels: Science and Splendor at the Courts of Europe", 25 November 2019 - 1 March 2020, edited by Wolfram Koeppe (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art / New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), as reported via press coverage of the exhibition. Tertiary re-reporting of the catalogue; flagged for replacement with the catalogue entry itself. - [5] Museum of Applied Arts (Iparmuveszeti Muzeum), Budapest, collection database entry for the astronomical clock attributed to Gerhard Emmoser, described as commissioned by Emperor Maximilian II. - [6] Technisches Museum Wien, object database record 154903, "Astronomische Prunkuhr Philippus Imsserus" (Ottheinrich of Pfalz-Neuburg's planetary clock, built 1556-1561 with Emmoser's participation, now in Vienna). - [7] Ian Ridpath, "Star Tales: Coma Berenices", covering the constellation's naming history including Caspar Vopel's Berenices Crinis (1536), Gerardus Mercator's Cincinnus (1551), and Tycho Brahe's Coma Berenices (1602). - [8] Wikipedia, "Antinous (constellation)", for the constellation's history and its merger into Aquila in the International Astronomical Union's 1922 standardization. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a dedicated history-of-astronomy reference. - [9] History of Science Museum, Oxford, "Prague, 1584: Celestial globe clock", on the comparable clockwork celestial globe by Georg Roll and Johannes Reinhold bought by Rudolf II in 1584 and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. - [10] Wikidata, item Q29383537 (Celestial globe with clockwork) and item Q55454454 (Gerhard Emmoser), for structured identifiers cross-checked against the Metropolitan Museum's own record. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.