Important English 21K gold and enamel pocket watch Circa 1680

Gold open faced verge
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An important English 21 carat gold and painted on enamel pocket watch, circa 1680 – 1685. A polished, solid case with deep back and inward edges, back finely painted on enamel depicting Roman Charity, band with four vignettes, each with a rural scene, inside painted with a house by a river, a tree in the foreground. Silver champleve dial, radial Roman numerals, outer minute track and Arabic five minute numerals and steel beetle poker hands. Frosted gilt, full plate movement with baluster pillars, fusee and chain, verge escapement, steel balance with flat balance spring, silvered single footed cock. The movement, dial and bezel circa 1730. The enamel is signed by Huaud le puisné fecit.
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Diameter: 40 mm
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Signed: Cabrier  London
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The painting (approx. 1626) of Simon Vouet (1590-1649) is exposed today in Bayonne at the Musée des Beaux-arts Bonnat-Helleu (oil on canvas Inv. CM 169). The work is then engraved by Claude Mellan (1598-1688). The painting shows the influence of Caravaggio (1571-1610) on the young Simon Vouet. Its dark background composition highlights the face of Pero and the harmony of colors. The subject comes from the historian Valere Maxime (1st century after Jesus Christ). Condemned to die of hunger in his cell, the old Cimon is visited daily by his daughter, Pero. Intrigued by his survival, despite his hunger strike, his captor discovers that Pero breastfeeds her father daily. The judges, faced with her devotion, set her father free. In the XVIIIth century iconography, free acts of charity are often the subject of enamel pocket watches, such as Roman charity as well as Cleopatra’s suicide. Similar watch cases signed or attributed to the Freres Huaut, Geneva or Berlin can be found at the Patek Philippe museum (INV. 244,447,667) or in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Neumarkt previously sold the present lot on September 20, 1968.