1470 Gardens of Love & Earthly Delights - Italian Illuminated Manuscript

The Garden of Love or The Fountain Of Life. Singers & Musicians In A Garden Miniature From De Sphaera By Leonardo Dati 1470 Italy

Beginning in 15C Italy & in Northern Europe, images of The Garden of Love appear in secular art depicting courtly love. The Garden of Love is often a landscape with a flowery meadow, a grove, & a fountain, where lovers gather to meet, eat, sing, dance, & make love. The Garden of Love, a literary theme in poetry of classical antiquity & the Middle Ages, was usually portrayed as an idyllic realm of courtly love - music, feasting, & games where ladies inspired dedicated service from their admirers. Much like the medieval Hortus Conclusus, an enclosed monastery garden usually a symbol of the Virgin Mary represented as a fortress in a religious allegory, the Garden of Love was also usually enclosed, secluded, & ordered but a world apart from the guilt of Christian religious symbolism. 

An enclosed medieval Hortus Conclusus located at royal palaces & grand manor houses usually represented a garden of earthly delights. Both the secular & the religious gardens could be enclosed by formidable high brick or stone wall, but sometimes a wicker fence or a wooden trellis. Both gardens would probably be filled with scented flowers & herbs. Most Gardens of Love have a flowing fountain, sometimes octagonal, often located in the garden center. In classical myth, a fountain traditionally belongs to the god of love. Often Cupid is included in the fountain design or is a carving beside it aiming arrows at the elites gathering & playing in The Garden of Love. 

The well-born needed leisure time to indulge in exploring love in an atmosphere where religious transgression was encouraged. Passing time; the constraints of religious & secular law; & infirmity & death existed only outside the wall of The Garden of Love which seemed to be unending spring. The Garden of Love could reflect earlier classical & religious investigations of the nature of love. The Garden of Love in European art declined during the late 15C.  However, The Garden of Love tradition was continued only occasionally later by Titian (fl 1506-1576) in the 16C; by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) in the 17C; & by Watteau (1684–1721) in the 18C.

1500s Gardens of Love & Earthly Delights -

Anonymous woodcut after 1568 Étienne Delaune (French artist, 1518-1595) Labours of the Months - May in a Garden.  In addition to serving different functions, Renaissance gardens also carried a range of associations, both literary & biblical. The Garden of Love, dedicated to the goddess Venus, was a primarily a pleasure garden offering both virtue & vice.

Garden of Love & Earthly Delights - 1420 Italian

Giovanni di Francesco Toscani (1370-1430)  The Garden of Love, c. 1420.

Giovanni di Francesco Toscani (1370-1430) - Detail The Garden of Love

Giovanni di Francesco Toscani (1370-1430) - Detail The Garden of Love

Beginning in 15C Italy & in Northern Europe, images of The Garden of Love appear in secular art depicting courtly love. The Garden of Love is often a landscape with a flowery meadow, a grove, & a fountain, where lovers gather to meet, eat, sing, dance, & make love. The Garden of Love, a literary theme in poetry of classical antiquity & the Middle Ages, was usually portrayed as an idyllic realm of courtly love - music, feasting, & games where ladies inspired dedicated service from their admirers. Much like the medieval Hortus Conclusus, an enclosed monastery garden usually a symbol of the Virgin Mary represented as a fortress in a religious allegory, the Garden of Love was also usually enclosed, secluded, & ordered but a world apart from the guilt of Christian religious symbolism. 

An enclosed medieval Hortus Conclusus located at royal palaces & grand manor houses usually represented a garden of earthly delights. Both the secular & the religious gardens could be enclosed by formidable high brick or stone wall, but sometimes a wicker fence or a wooden trellis. Both gardens would probably be filled with scented flowers & herbs. Most Gardens of Love have a flowing fountain, sometimes octagonal, often located in the garden center. In classical myth, a fountain traditionally belongs to the god of love. Often Cupid is included in the fountain design or is a carving beside it aiming arrows at the elites gathering & playing in The Garden of Love. 

The well-born needed leisure time to indulge in exploring love in an atmosphere where religious transgression was encouraged. Passing time; the constraints of religious & secular law; & infirmity & death existed only outside the wall of The Garden of Love which seemed to be unending spring. The Garden of Love could reflect earlier classical & religious investigations of the nature of love. The Garden of Love in European art declined during the late 15C.  However, The Garden of Love tradition was continued only occasionally later by Titian (fl 1506-1576) in the 16C; by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) in the 17C; & by Watteau (1684–1721) in the 18C.

Garden of Love & Earthly Delights - 1430s German

Attributed to Master E.S.German (or conceivably Swiss) engraver, Southwestern Germany 1430s-1470 The Garden of Love.

Attributed to Master E.S.German (or conceivably Swiss) engraver, Southwestern Germany 1430s-1470 The Garden of Love. Detail

Beginning in 15C Italy & in Northern Europe, images of The Garden of Love appear in secular art depicting courtly love. The Garden of Love is often a landscape with a flowery meadow, a grove, & a fountain, where lovers gather to meet, eat, sing, dance, & make love. The Garden of Love, a literary theme in poetry of classical antiquity & the Middle Ages, was usually portrayed as an idyllic realm of courtly love - music, feasting, & games where ladies inspired dedicated service from their admirers. Much like the medieval Hortus Conclusus, an enclosed monastery garden usually a symbol of the Virgin Mary represented as a fortress in a religious allegory, the Garden of Love was also usually enclosed, secluded, & ordered but a world apart from the guilt of Christian religious symbolism. 

An enclosed medieval Hortus Conclusus located at royal palaces & grand manor houses usually represented a garden of earthly delights. Both the secular & the religious gardens could be enclosed by formidable high brick or stone wall, but sometimes a wicker fence or a wooden trellis. Both gardens would probably be filled with scented flowers & herbs. Most Gardens of Love have a flowing fountain, sometimes octagonal, often located in the garden center. In classical myth, a fountain traditionally belongs to the god of love. Often Cupid is included in the fountain design or is a carving beside it aiming arrows at the elites gathering & playing in The Garden of Love. 

The well-born needed leisure time to indulge in exploring love in an atmosphere where religious transgression was encouraged. Passing time; the constraints of religious & secular law; & infirmity & death existed only outside the wall of The Garden of Love which seemed to be unending spring. The Garden of Love could reflect earlier classical & religious investigations of the nature of love. The Garden of Love in European art declined during the late 15C.  However, The Garden of Love tradition was continued only occasionally later by Titian (fl 1506-1576) in the 16C; by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) in the 17C; & by Watteau (1684–1721) in the 18C.

Garden of Love & Earthly Delights - 15C German Engraving

The Garden of Love c. 1465. Master E. S. (German). engraving. With chess-players, 3 couples assembled in a garden, enclosed by a fence; one lover to the right is depicted as a jester.

Beginning in 15C Italy & in Northern Europe, images of The Garden of Love appear in secular art depicting courtly love. The Garden of Love is often a landscape with a flowery meadow, a grove, & a fountain, where lovers gather to meet, eat, sing, dance, & make love. The Garden of Love, a literary theme in poetry of classical antiquity & the Middle Ages, was usually portrayed as an idyllic realm of courtly love - music, feasting, & games where ladies inspired dedicated service from their admirers. Much like the medieval Hortus Conclusus, an enclosed monastery garden usually a symbol of the Virgin Mary represented as a fortress in a religious allegory, the Garden of Love was also usually enclosed, secluded, & ordered but a world apart from the guilt of Christian religious symbolism. 

An enclosed medieval Hortus Conclusus located at royal palaces & grand manor houses usually represented a garden of earthly delights. Both the secular & the religious gardens could be enclosed by formidable high brick or stone wall, but sometimes a wicker fence or a wooden trellis. Both gardens would probably be filled with scented flowers & herbs. Most Gardens of Love have a flowing fountain, sometimes octagonal, often located in the garden center. In classical myth, a fountain traditionally belongs to the god of love. Often Cupid is included in the fountain design or is a carving beside it aiming arrows at the elites gathering & playing in The Garden of Love. 

The well-born needed leisure time to indulge in exploring love in an atmosphere where religious transgression was encouraged. Passing time; the constraints of religious & secular law; & infirmity & death existed only outside the wall of The Garden of Love which seemed to be unending spring. The Garden of Love could reflect earlier classical & religious investigations of the nature of love. The Garden of Love in European art declined during the late 15C.  However, The Garden of Love tradition was continued only occasionally later by Titian (fl 1506-1576) in the 16C; by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) in the 17C; & by Watteau (1684–1721) in the 18C.

15C Garden of Love & Earthly Delights

1450-67 Master ES Two Lovers in a Garden sitting on a raised bed

This is one of my favorite depictions of a medieval garden. Actually, what I really adore about this garden is the gentleman's extremely pointed shoes, his awkwardly placed sword, & that he is trying so hard.

This couple sits on a crude, wooden turf seat, whic were usually built against a wall, with flowers planted in the grass. Beneath their feet is a Flowery Mead, a medieval grass lawn planted with low-growing wild flowers. The flowery mead is one of the essential components of a medieval garden. Poet Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) in his Decameron of 1348 wrote  "in the midst of the garden a lawn of very fine grass, so green it seemed nearly black, colored with perhaps a thousand kind of flowers……shut in with very green citrus & orange trees bearing, at the same time, both ripe fruit & young fruit & flowers so that they pleased the sense of smell as well as charmed the eyes with shade."

A Mead is a medieval garden designed to imitate a small meadow or sometimes a larger, natural meadow. A Flowery Mead is a medieval term for a lawn rich in wild flowers. A flowery mead is often one of the essential components of a medieval garden. The flowery mead depicted is seldom within a distinct, geometric, larger garden. Albertus Magnus (c 1200-1280), a German Dominican friar & a Catholic bishop, was a great admirer of lawns & flowery meads "For the sight is in now way so pleasantly refreshed as by fine and close grass kept short." Most writers recommend digging out the original 'waste' plants, killing the seeds in the soil by flooding with boiling water, then laying out the lawn with curves laid in and pounded well. Another writer recommended mowing them twice a year; lawn mowing would have been done with scythes or primitive shears. 

Raised beds often appear in Medieval vegetable & medicinal gardens. Raised beds helped prevent plants becoming waterlogged. Such beds were almost universally rectangular, and arranged in a regular pattern, either windowpane check or checkerboard. Roman author Columella (4-70 ce) wrote in On Agriculture "The ground is divided into beds, which, however, should be so contrived that the hands of those who weed them can easily reach the middle of their breadth, so that those who are going after weeds may not be forced to tread on the seedlings, but rather may make their way along paths and weed first one and then the other half of the bed."

In The Gardener's Labyrinth of 1577, the 1st English gardening book, Thomas Hill (b 1528) suggested beds of "one foot of breadth, and into what length the owner or gardener will. . . let the pathes between the beds be of such areasonable breadth (as a mans foot) that they passing along by, may freely weed the one half first, and next the other half left to weed."

John Parkinson (1657-1650)proposed in his 1629 Paradisi in Sole, Paradisus Terrestris, that beds be edged with lead "cut to the breadth of foure fingers, bowing the lower edge a little outward," oaken inch boards four or five inches broad," or shank bones of sheep, or tiles, or "round whitish or blewish pebble stones of some reasonable proportion and bignesse."

Raised beds could be built up & edged with boards or woven panels of willow to improve drainage, as Roman author Columella (4-70 ce) recommended. Parkinson also suggested edging raised beds with either live plants or dead materials such as tiles, lead, sheep shank bones, or boards. 

Potted plants & trees often were depicted placed on top of raised, grassy beds in gardens usually containing young vegetables, perennials or fruit trees. Potting plants was used to extend the growing season. Thomas Hill, apparently enamoured with cucumbers, pointed out that the gardener could start cucumbers early by planting them in pots; leaving them out all day in warm weather; & moving them into a warm shed at night."The Gardiner which would possesse Cucumbers timely & very soone, yea & all the yeare through, ought...in the beginning of the the spring, to fill up old worne baskets & earthen pans without bottomes, with fine sifted earth tempered afore with fat dung, & to moisten somewhat the earth with water, after the seeds bestowed in theses, which done when warme & sunnie daies succeede, or a gentle raine falling, the baskets or pans with the plants, are then to be set abroad, to be strengthened & cherished by the sun & small showres; but the evening approching, these in all the cold season ought to be set under some warm cover or house in the ground, to be defended from the frosts & cold aire, which thus standing under a cover, or in the warme house, moisten gently with water sundry times, & these on such wise handle, untill all the Frosts, Tempests, & cold aire be past, as commonly the same ceaseth not with us, till abut the middest of May. After these, when opportunity or an apt day serveth the Gardener shall bestow the Baskets or Pannes unto the brimme, or deeper in the earth, well laboured or trimmed before, with the rest of the diligenceto be exercised, as before uttered; which done, the Gardener shall enjoy very forward & timelier Cowcumbers than any others. This matter may be compassed, both easier, in shorter time, & with lesser travell, if the owner, after the cutting of the waste branches, doth set them in well labored beds, for these in far shorter time & speedier, doe yeeld faire Cucumbers. The one thing I think necessary to be learned, for the avoiding of the daily labour & paines, in the setting abroad & carrying into the house, either halfe tubs, baskets, or earthen bannes, which on this wise by greater facility may be done, if so be the Gardener bestwo the vessells with the plants in Wheel-barrowes, or such like with Wheeles; for these, to mens reason, causeth marvellous easiness, doth in the bestowing abroad, & carrying againe into the warme house, as often as need shall require. The young plants may be defended from cold & boisterous windes, yea, frosts, the cold aire, & hot Sunne, if Glasses made for the onely purpose, be set over them, which on such wise bestowed on the beds, yeelded in a manner to Tiberius Caesar, Cucumbers all the year, in which he took great delight, as after the worthy Columella, the learned Plinie hath committed the same to memory, which every day obtained the like, as he writeth."

15C Garden of Love & Earthly Delights

1460-67 Master ES German. The garden of love; a young woman and man sit on either side of a garden well, accompanied by a bag-pipe-playing jester & the lady's small spotted dog & the gentleman's larger, perhaps a bit distainful dog.  I do like the gentleman's coat.  I am wondering if this is a traditional well or one of those fish-pond type fish stew ponds (where fish were purged of muddy water before cooking) to ensure a regular supply of protein during the many fast days of the early Christian calendar.

Garden of Love & Earthly Delights - 15C Playing Games & Making Music & Love

 German Master bxg, c. 1470-90 Couple playing cards

 German Master bxg, c. 1470-90 Couple making music


 German Master bxg, c. 1470-90 Couple in love

Most Medieval gardens were secluded gardens, Hortus Conclusus, often representing a garden of earthly delights meant for recreation, romance, & relaxation. Gardens were enclosed within hedgerows, fences, or walls, like these, & they were filled with scented flowers & herbs.  Grass was treated as a flowery mead planted with low growing wild flowers. Turf seats, such as those we see here, were usually built against a wall with flowers planted in the grass.  

13C Garden & Farm Labors for each month of a Year

12 Scenes of the Labors of the Year, from Le Rustiean by Pietro de Crescenzi (1230—1320/1) c. 1460  Latin Petrus de Crescentiis, was a Bolognese jurist, now remembered for his writings on horticulture and agriculture, the Ruralia Commoda.

Garden of Love & Earthly Delights - 16C A little Night Music

1520 Fernando de Rojas, 'Ain Hipsche Tragedia von zwaien liebhabenden mentschen ainem Ritter Calixtus und ainer Edlen junckfrawen Melibia genannt', Augsburg Grimm and Wirsung Here lady & gentleman communicate with a little music in a walled garden, as the moon shines down on them.

Garden of Love & Earthly Delights - Hans Weiditz (German artist, c 1500-1536)

1531 Illustration to Cicero, 'Officia'  Augsburg, by Hans Weiditz (German artist, c1500-c1536)  Published by Heinrich Steiner (fl.1530).  Here is an enclosed garden. In 16C manor houses, these enclosed spaces often represented a garden of earthly delights. Enclosed within wattle fences, with grass treated as a flowery mead planted with low-growing wild flowers & herbs. Birds & visitors filled the air with music.

Courtly Gardens & Grounds -16C Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor's imperial court of Augsburg

Lucas van Gassel (Dutch artist, 1490-1568) Gardens & Grounds at Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor's imperial court of Augsburg

Garden of Love & Earthly Delights - 16C Birds & Love

Crispin de Passe (1565-1637), The Four Seasons - Spring. This couple is celebrating Spring just outside the fenced garden, but they are surely surrounded by a landscape of earthly delights.  A goat, sheep, dog accompany them, and birds, caged & wild, fill the air with bird songs.

Courtly Gardens & Grounds - 16C Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor's imperial court of Augsburg

Henri met de Bles (Southern Netherlandish artist, 1480-1555) Gardens & Grounds at Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor's imperial court of Augsburg

In the Gamepark - 1580

1580-82 The Four Seasons - Spring after Dirk Barendsz. This is a personification of Spring with flowers in her hair, seated on the ground with vases with flowers & a water basin with a statue in front of her. A partially hidden couple is at a garden table. A hunt is behind.

16C Garden -1595 Music

1595 Spring from The Four Seasons  Artwork after  Hendrick Goltzius; print by Saenredam. Couple are seated on a turf seat in a garden setting, where they read & make music. Another couple embraces behind the tree to the left.

16C Garden - Roses for the Elegantly Imprisoned

Miniature of the Lover outside the Castle of Jealousy, where Bel Accueil (Fair Welcome) is imprisoned by Jealousy, from Roman de la Rose, Netherlands (Bruges), c. 1500, Harley MS 4425, f. 39r

16C Garden - Love this Persian Garden Tree House!

Anvarī, great 12C Persian poet, in a treetop garden pavilion (Mughal ms. 16C) Anvari Entertains in a Summer House (painting, verso; text, recto), folio 109 from a manuscript of the Divan of Anvari. Harvard University

16C Garden - 1581 May Garden Party with Music & Boat Rides

Musica dulce laborum (1581): decorated inside lid of double virginals by Hans Ruckers the Elder (1540s–1598). New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Inv. 1929 (29.90). 

The inside lid reveals a pleasure garden scene, the artist is unknown. The theme of the outdoor garden party, the buitenpartij or fête champêtre, of which this is an early example, became a popular genre in the 17C Netherlands, reviving the age-old artistic tradition of the Garden of Love. The elegantly dressed members of the upper class are amusing themselves in the meadows & gardens of the adjoining, moated castle. Their activities range from dining and playing musical instruments in the central pergola, to gentle promenades, embarking on a boat ride, or playing the game of kolf, forerunner of today’s golf. The text painted on the drop-board of this virginal, MUSICA DULCE LABORUM (“sweet music eases work”), not only refers to the playing of this keyboard instrument, but also to the musicians in the painted garden of leisure.

Musica dulce laborum (1581): decorated inside lid of double virginals by Hans Ruckers the Elder (1540s–1598). New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Inv. 1929 (29.90).