1600s Formal Garden - Locus amoenus

Wenceslaus Hollar (Czech artist, 1607-1677)  Spring

Allegorical characters, such as "Spring" above, in stories & in art are often located in garden settings, frequently in or near walled gardens such as the one depicted here. The locus amoenus was one of the traditional locations of epic & chivalric literature. As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a type of prose & verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of Medieval & Early Modern Europe.  Locus amoenus (Latin for "pleasant place") is a literary term which generally refering to an idealized place of safety or comfort, usually a beautiful, shady parkland or open woods, or a group of idyllic garden areas, sometimes with connotations of Eden. A locus amoenus usually has 3 basic elements: trees, grass, & water. Often, the locus amoenus garden will be in a remote place & with only components of a more formal, geometric, walled garden. 

The artist Wenceslaus Hollar was born in 1607, the son of an upper middle-class civic official. Very little is known about his early life, but he evidently learned the rudiments of his craft by age eighteen, left his native Prague at age twenty, and likely studied in Frankfurt under Matthaus Merian. His first book of etchings was published in 1635, in Cologne when Hollar was twenty-eight. The following year he came to the attention of the renowned art collector the Earl of Arundel who was making an official visit to the continent, and Hollar subsequently became a part of his household, settling in England early in 1637. He remained in England during the beginning of the English Civil War period, but left London for Antwerp in 1642, where he continued to work on a variety of projects. In 1652 he returned to England, working on a number of large projects for the publisher John Ogilby and for the antiquary Sir William Dugdale. Hollar was in London during the Great Fire of 1666, and remains most famous for his scenes of the city before and after the fire. He was one of the most skilled etchers of his or any other time, which is all the more remarkable given that he was almost blind in one eye. Hollar died in London on 25 March 1677. By his life's end, he had produced some 2700 separate etchings.

17C Garden 1609

1609 Month of April Print made by Adriaen Collaert After Jacques Callot After Joos de Momper  

17C Garden 1614

APRIL print Made & Published by Hendrik Hondius II 1614

17C Gardens 1689

1687 April Crispijn van de Passe (I), Maerten de Vos, 1574 - 1687

17C Discovering a Garden in a Painting Background - 1640 Minerva

 1640 Louis Ferdinand Elle the Elder (French artist, 1612-1689) Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans Grande Mademoiselle as Minerva

17C Discovering a Garden in a Painting Background

Anonymous Artist - Spring with Flowers & a Garden in the Background. Madrid, Museo del Prado. 1601-1650

Spring & "springtime" refer to the ecological, environmental season, and also to ideas of rebirth, rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection & regrowth.

17C Garden 1610

1610 Twelve months  Jacques Callot (Print made by) Adriaen Collaert (After) Joos de Momper (After) 

17C Garden Fountains & Search for a Proper Mate

Style of Caspar Netscher (Dutch artist, 1639-1684) Portrait of a Young Lady at a Fountain

By the 17C & 18C, artists portrayed women & girls, often the eligible daughters of the patrons commissioning the portraits, near a fountain.In these fountain settings, the young lady is often depicted in the mythical realm of Arcady, a fashionable conceit of the time. At the center of Arcady is the Garden of Love, where a figure of Cupid sits atop a fountain. The young lady places her hand in the flowing water...this is a motif much used by Van Dyke & Lely & it makes an allusion to her potential as a wife & mother, recalling Proverbs, Chapter 5, Verse 18 "Let thy fountain be blessed, & rejoice in the wife of thy youth."

Peter Lely (English artist, 1618-1680) Unknown Lady at Fountain

Garden fountains were originally purely functional, connected to natural springs or aqueducts & used to provide water for drinking; water for bathing & washing; & water to nurish growing plants. The painting would announce to the viewer that the parent/patron had enough money, taste, & technological expertise to channel the water through an artistic garden fountain. Water was now not just a necessary component of nature, the garden planner could make it an integral component of art both outdoors in his garden & indoors in the paintings on his walls. He could not only interpret nature, he could control it. And in this painting, he could announce his "natural" superiority, & might chose to have the portrait he has commissioned suggest that his young lady was becoming sexually available for the right marriage partner.

1661 Peter Lely (English artist, 1618-1680) Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, 1637 - 1671. Became The First wife of James VII and II.

1664 Nicolaes Maes (Dutch artist, 1634-1693) Young Lady by a Fountain

Nicolaes Maes (Dutch artist, 1634-1693) Young Lady by a Fountain (For those who did not like a blond, serious sitter, Maes apparently painted this more cheerful brunette.)

Peter Lely (English artist, 1618-1680) Portrait of Lady Elizabeth Egerton (1653-1709)

 Nicolaes Maes (Dutch artist, 1634-1693) Young Lady by a Fountain

1650 Attr David Des Granges (British artist, 1611-c.1671) Portrait of Elizabeth, Countess of Carnarvon(1633-1678)

1650-70 John Michael Wright (British artist, 1617-1694) Miss Butterworth of Belfield Hall

Peter Lely (English artist, 1618-1680) Portrait Of Diana, Countess of Ailesbury

 Peter Lely (English artist, 1618-1680) Portrait of a Young Lady

 c 1693–1697 Adriaen van der Werff (Dutch artist, 1659-1722) Lady by a Fountain

Caspar Netscher (Dutch artist, 1639-1684) Portrait of a Lady with a Fountain in a Garden Beyond the Terrace Wall

 1715 Lady Henrietta Crofts, Duchess of Bolton by a fountain

Nicolaes Maes (Dutch artist, 1634-1693) Young Girl stops at a garden fountain as her dog drinks the water below.

Style of Pieter Nason (Dutch artist, c 1612-1688-90) Portrait of a young Anna Catharina van Heemskerck (1676-1723) seated by a fountain on a draped garden terrace

Brabant school, the end of the 17C. Young Girl at a fountain.

Barent Graat (Dutch artist, 1628-1709) Portrait of a Girl Cleaning Cherries in a Fountain

Nicolaes Maes (Dutch artist, 1634-1693) Young Lady's arm rests on a garden fountain

Barend van Kalraet (Dutch artist, 1649-1737) Lady by a Fountain with a tame Bird

Peter Lely (English artist, 1618-1680) A Young Lady dips her arm in the garden fountain while a dog and child stand nearby

Nicolaes Maes (Dutch artist, 1634-1693) Catherine Peels

1671-80 Style of Peter Lely (English artist, 1618-1680) The Duchess of Lauderdale

Godfrey Kneller (German-born English artist, 1646-1723) Susannah Anlaby (d.1715), later Mrs Foote Onslow