The exquisite design of many early clock cases brings to mind what the art historian E.H. Gombrich said about elaborate picture frames, that they are “a form of praise” for the pictures they surround. Looking at “The Art of Time: European Clocks and Watches from the Collection,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, evokes the feeling that the English, French, Dutch, Swiss, and Germans between the 14th and 18th centuries bowed, prostrate, before the awesome power of the clock — and of its non-acoustical relative, the timepiece.

The earliest clocks on show come from Augsburg, in present-day Bavaria, a major center of clockmaking until the twin debacles of plague (1619) and the Thirty Years War (1618–48) wracked the city and reordered its economy. Still, the Met dates a remarkable Augsburg clock, bearing a gilded statuette of Madonna and child, made by Nikolaus Schmidt as c. 1620–25, meaning that it must have been made in the midst of horrendous suffering. The Virgin Mary wears a crown that acts as a clock dial. She cradles the infant Jesus in her right arm, and in her left wields a scepter that points to the hours on the clock face behind her. A mantel clock by Johann Andreas Thelot, in steel and brass, bears more than 30 miniature figures in intricate relief, relating themes from the story of Venus, surrounded by numerous cherubs.

Display cases of watches feature some wonderful watchcases, such as a Swiss skull watch from c. 1640–50, meant to remind its user of the 89th Psalm, “Oh, remember how short my time is.” Other watch cases bear fine reliefs or enamel-painted scenes. But what most impresses among the watches are not the cases, but the faces, some in the most amazing, delicate, lacy designs in brass, steel, and silver, as though spun out in sugary tendrils. An example is a French watch from c. 1680 by Nicolas Gribelin, the clockmaker to Philippe, duc d’Orléans.

Clock technology changed little in the 300 or so years from the origin of the mechanical clock to its refinement by the great Dutch mathematician Christian Huygens, whose pendulum clock, marking a major advance in accurate timekeeping, appeared in 1656. His book on the pendulum, “Horologium Oscillatorium,” came out in 1673, and two years later he made a further advance with his spiral balance spring. Most of the clocks and watches in the show date from after Huygens’s advances.

It comes as no surprise that French Rococo clocks of the 18th century would be dazzlers. Some, such as one from ca. 1745, feature elaborate and brilliantly colored figures in soft-paste porcelain. The best, certainly the most amusing, of the 18th-century French clocks is a mantel clock, c. 1798–1800, by Jean-Simon Deverberie, with bold figures in patinated bronze symbolizing America with fanciful, wildly romantic (and sexually charged) figures of Native Americans — whom the artist mistakenly presumed to have black skin. A fascinating clock from c. 1766–70 by the master clockmaker Jean-André Lepaute features a wonderful bronze cherub at whose feet lies a chart showing the lunar eclipse of April 1, 1764, as calculated by Lepaute’s wife, the astronomer Nicole-Reine Étable de la Brière. Now is a good time to study Lepaute in New York, since the Frick Collection has put on display, in the Fragonard Room, a sensational clock Lepaute made with figures by Clodion.

Several very fine longcase clocks from the late 17th and early 18th centuries line one wall. An especially beautiful one was made in c. 1690–94 by the curiously named Englishman Ahasuerus II Fromanteel, working in the Netherlands. Its walnut with rosewood veneer on oak, limewood, and brass typifies the superb craftsmanship and handling of materials evident in every piece on display.

Fans of Dava Sobel’s “Longitude” (1995) will be gratified to see the handiwork of the Englishman John Harrison and the Frenchman Ferdinand Berthoud, but for me the highlights were in the display case dedicated to James Cox (c. 1723–1800), an English clockmaker who marketed himself as one who “Makes Great Variety of Curious Wares in Gold, Silver and other METTALS. Also Amber, Pearl, Tortoiseshell and Curious Stones.” Curious gets curiouser in Cox’s works, which bear less relation to “forms of praise” than to eccentric garden follies — which, come to think of it, may themselves be forms of praise. Cox operated a very large firm (which may have had as many as 1,000 employees at its height) that made clocks and jewelry for export to China and India. When business slowed, Cox opened a museum of his works in central London. Dr. Johnson was a fan, praising the “power of mechanism and splendour of show” in Cox’s works, though Fanny Burney’s Evelina said of Cox’s works that they were “mere show, though a wonderful one.”

The Met doesn’t have one of Cox’s 16-foot-high automata, but it does have several outstanding pieces, of which the best is the “Automaton in the Form of a Chariot Pushed by a Chinese Attendant and Set with a Clock.” It has a gold case, with diamonds, paste jewels set in silver, and pearls. This turriferous heap of baubles, this glittering folly, is alone reason to visit “The Art of Time.”

Until April 27 (1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd Street, 212-535-7710).