Checked content

File:German - Spherical Table Watch (Melanchthon's Watch) - Walters 5817 - View C.jpg

Summary

Artist

Anonymous (German artist)

Title Spherical Table Watch (Melanchthon's Watch)
Description
English: This is the earliest dated watch known. It is engraved on the bottom: "PHIL[IP]. MELA[NCHTHON]. GOTT. ALEIN. DIE. EHR[E]. 1530" (Philip Melanchthon, to God alone the glory, 1530). There are very few watches existing today that predate 1550; only two dated examples are known--this one from 1530 and another from 1548. There is no watchmaker's mark, although Nuremberg is considered the birthplace of spherical watches (called "Nuremberg Eggs"). A single winding kept it running for 12 to 16 hours, and it told time to within the nearest half hour. The perforations in the case permitted one to see the time without opening the watch. This watch was commissioned by the great German reformer and humanist Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560).
Date 1530 ( Renaissance)
Medium gilt on brass case, gilt on brass dial, iron movement
Dimensions Height: 4.8 cm (1.9 in). Width: 4.8 cm (1.9 in).
Accession number 58.17
Exhibition history Philip Melanchthon's Watch. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 2000-2001.
Credit line Acquired by Henry Walters, 1910
Inscriptions [Transcription] Engraved on the bottom: PHIL[IP]. MELA[NCHTHON]. GOTT. ALEIN. DIE. EHR[E]. 1530; [Translation] Engraved on bottom: Philip Melanchthon, to God alone the glory, 1530
Ownership history
  • Jacques Seligmann, Paris, by purchase
  • 1910: purchased by Henry Walters, Baltimore
  • 1931: bequeathed to Walters Art Museum by Henry Walters
place of origin Augsburg, Germany (?)
Source/Photographer Walters Art Museum: Nuvola filesystems folder home.svg Home page  Information icon.svg Info about artwork
Permission
( Reusing this file)
OTRS Wikimedia

The permission to use this work has been archived in the Wikimedia OTRS system. It is available as ticket #2012021710000834 for users with an OTRS account. If you wish to reuse this work elsewhere, please read the instructions at COM:REUSE. If you are a Commons user and wish to confirm the permission, please leave a note at the OTRS noticeboard.

Ticket link: https://ticket.wikimedia.org/otrs/index.pl?Action=AgentTicketZoom&TicketNumber=2012021710000834

Error reporting You can help by reporting errors and typos at Commons:Walters Art Museum/error report.
If the error was added by a Wikimedian and is not present on the museum's website, you can fix this page directly, without notifying.

Licensing

Walters Art Museum logo gray.png This file was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the Walters Art Museum as part of a cooperation project. All artworks in the photographs are in public domain due to age. The photographs of two-dimensional objects are also in the public domain. Photographs of three-dimensional objects and all descriptions have been released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License.

In case of the text descriptions, copyright restrictions only apply to longer descriptions which cross the threshold of originality.


Object:

Public domain This work is in the public domain in the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less.
This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.

Photograph and description:

w:en:Creative Commons
attribution share alike
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Attribution: Walters Art Museum
You are free:
  • to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
  • attribution – You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
  • share alike – If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

GNU head Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.

The following pages on Schools Wikipedia link to this image (list may be incomplete):

Schools Wikipedia and SOS Children

SOS Children has brought Wikipedia to the classroom. By supporting vulnerable children right through to adulthood, SOS Childrens Villages makes a lasting difference to the lives of thousands of people. Education is a key part of our work, and our schools provide high-quality teaching to the children in our care. Why not try to learn more about child sponsorship?