Charlotte Vignon

The Frick Collection has one of the most important public collections of European timepieces in the United States, much of it acquired through the 1999 bequest of the New York collector Winthrop Kellogg Edey. This extraordinary gift of thirty-eight watches and clocks dating from the Renaissance to the early nineteenth century covers the art of horology in France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. For reasons of space, only part of the collection can be on permanent view in the museum’s galleries. In 2001, many pieces from the Edey collection were featured in The Art of the Timekeeper: Masterpieces from the Winthrop Edey Bequest, an exhibition organized at the Frick by guest curator William J. H. Andrewes. In 2013, visitors have another opportunity to explore the breadth and significance of the Edey collection through an exhibition that presents fourteen watches and eleven clocks from his bequest.

Since antiquity, gemstones (also known as hard or semiprecious stones) have been cut and polished for use in jewelry, in the creation of vases and cups, and in the decoration of palaces. Rediscovered and developed in sixteenth-century Florence, pietra dura (hard stone) objects were collected and sometimes used as political propaganda among the Medici. A sign of wealth, taste, and power, they were also offered as diplomatic gifts or acquired by foreign sovereigns.

Although it was not until 2008 that the first piece of maiolica entered The Frick Collection, it was an extraordinary debut: a large dish painted with a narrative scene, oristoriato, inspired by Marcantonio Raimondi's print after The Judgment of Paris by Raphael. This scene is surrounded by colorful grotesques delicately painted on a white ground, a specialty of the renowned workshop of Orazio Fontana in Urbino, to which the best pieces are usually attributed.