This exquisite mantel clock reflects the fashion for great heroic narratives that emerged in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.  It depicts in gilt-bronze the moment when the three Horatii brothers took an oath of loyalty to Rome before fighting the Curatii for supremacy over the region of Alba, in central Italy. For royalty, this story represented patriotic ideals and the necessity of placing country over family – not least since one of the Horatii brothers had been married to a Curatii.  The decorative aspect of such clocks was often prioritised over their ability to tell accurate time, leading the King's Clockmaker, Benjamin Vulliamy, to complain that the original movement was 'very bad'.  In 1819 he restored it, ten years after the clock had been acquired by George IV.