File:Sketch of a French Empire style clock. Calliope crowning Virgil.jpg

English: Watercolour and gouache over lithographic line, on laid paper. Inscribed: : J. B. A. / Impie Lithoue de C Motte rue des Marais No.13 Fg. St. Gn. Numbered: 29. Dimensions: 68cm. by 50.8cm.

To be executed in gilt and patinated bronze and statuary marble or alabaster; silvered metal dial.

The bust of the poet mounted on a plinth shaped altar fronted by the clock dial between lyre and swan motifs, flanked by a figure of a Muse and a flambeau suspending a lyre; the frieze with Cupid playing a lyre.

In this design Virgil is attended by Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry whose attributes include the trumpet; she holds a laurel wreath to reward his poetic achievement. Virgil was one of the great poets who made the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus so celebrated. His epic poem the Æneid recounts Æneas and his band of followers’ trials and adventures following his escape after the fall of Troy to the Greeks. After long wanderings they finally settled in Latinum in Italy and became the ancestors of the Roman people. Louis XVIII’s own wanderings before his Restoration in 1814 were redolent of Æneas’s “wilderness years”.