17C Gardens 1689

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

18C Allegories of Spring - Love & Bird Nests

1785 Probably Britain. Here a young man is handing a birds' nest to a young woman. He has one hand on her shoulder as she accepts the nest.  She is collecting spring flowers in her apron. The couple is passing by another woman kneeling beside a basket of flowers and hold up a garland for the couple to see. Men are sowing grain in fields in the background to left.

18C Allegories of Spring - Love & Bird Nests

1796 Spring Published by George Thompson London

 This depiction of Spring shows a family on a river bank.  The man is holding a fishing rod and displying a fish caught on the line, while the woman opens a wicker basket full of others. The little girl stands holding a basket of flowers, while the little boy kneels in the foreground, feeding birds in a nest in his hat. Behind them a team is ploughing in the background to right. 

18C Allegories of Spring - Love & Bird Nests

18C English Woodcut of Spring

Another bird's nest with chirping chicks is gently placed in the woman's apron.

gar 1745 Allegories of Spring- In a Garden

 1745 Spring from The Four Seasons Les Quatre Saisons after Nicolas Lancret  & published in France Here in a garden with a fountain & a birdbath lying on the ground, a young man holding a spade talks to a young woman holding a basket of flowers, while another woman on the right is watering plants.

1754 Allegories of Spring - In a Garden

1754 Spring from The Four Seasons published by Thomas Major London. 

People appear to work in the walled sunken garden behind the group. A man hands a flower to a young woman sitting on a terrace with her attendant standing behind them.  A boy at right has a parrot perched on his hand.  They are in a garden with a statue of a Venus & an arch at left, through which a couple can be seen in an embrace. Plants in pots dot the area around the group.

1758 Allegories of Spring - A bit of Watering & a bit of Flirting in a Garden

1758 Spring from The Four Seasons  After Nicolas Lancret by John Simon. Here is a a garden with a fountain & a birdbath lying on the ground, where a young man holding a spade stops working to talk with a young woman holding a basket of flowers, while the other woman, now on the left, is actually watering plants.

1687 Love & Music - Peter Rollos (fl 1619-1639)

Peter Rollos (fl 1619-1639), The center of love 1687

1685-1688 Garden in a Painting Background - 17C Couple

1685-88 Pieter Cornelisz van Slingeland (1640-1691) Jan van Musschenbroek and His Wife

Love in the Garden - Crispin de Passe 1565-1637

 Crispin de Passe (1565-1637) The Five Senses 

1622 Frans Hals c 1582-1666 - Couples in Gardens

1622 Frans Hals (Dutch artist, c 1582-1666) Married Couple in a Garden

1622 Frans Hals (Dutch artist, c 1582-1666) Couple in a Garden Detail

17C Love & Harvesting

Juni Hooien, After Crispijn van de Passe (I), Maerten de Vos, c. 1574 - c. 1687

Grain agriculture in ancient Rome provided bread for everyman's table & was idealized among the social elite as a way of life. Cicero considered farming the best of all Roman occupations. In his treatise On Duties, he declared that "of all the occupations by which gain is secured, none is better than agriculture, none more profitable, none more delightful, none more becoming to a free man." When one of his clients was derided in court for preferring a rural lifestyle, Cicero defended country life as "the teacher of economy, of industry, & of justice." Cato wrote "when they would praise a worthy man their praise took this form: 'Good husband good farmer'; it is from the farming class that the bravest men & the sturdiest soldiers come."  Cato, Columella, Varro & Palladius wrote handbooks on farming.

Staple crops included wheat, emmer, spelt, & barley, all of them used for bread, the mainstay of every Roman table. In his treatise De agricultura ("On Farming", 2nd century BC), Cato wrote that the best farms contained a vineyard, followed by an irrigated garden, willow plantation, olive orchard, meadow, grain land, forest trees, vineyard trained on trees, & lastly acorn woodlands. "The people living in the city of Rome constituted a huge market for the purchase of food produced on Italian farms.  Cato claimed that a small farm should have "a foreman, a foreman's wife, ten laborers, one ox driver, one donkey driver, one man in charge of the willow grove, one swineherd, in all sixteen persons; two oxen, two donkeys for wagon work, one donkey for the mill work." 

Land ownership was a dominant factor in distinguishing the aristocracy from the common person, & the more land a Roman owned, the more important he would be in the city. Soldiers were often rewarded with land from the commander they served. Though farms depended on slave labor, free men & citizens were hired at farms to oversee the slaves & ensure that the farms ran smoothly.  The Romans had four systems of farm management: direct work by owner & his family; tenant farming or sharecropping in which the owner & a tenant divide up a farm's produce; forced labor by slaves owned by aristocrats & supervised by slave managers; & other arrangements in which a farm was leased to a tenant.

There was much commerce between the provinces of the empire, & all regions of the empire were largely economically interdependent. Some provinces specialized in the production of grains including wheat, emmer, spelt, barley, & millet; others in wine & others in olive oil, depending on the soil type. Columella writes in his Res Rustica, "Soil that is heavy, chalky, & wet is not unsuited to the growing for winter wheat & spelt. Barley tolerates no place except one that is loose & dry."  Pliny the Elder wrote extensively about agriculture in his Naturalis Historia including chapter XVIII on The Natural History of Grain 

In the Roman Empire, some calculated that a family of 6 people would need to cultivate 12 iugera/ 3 hectares of land to meet minimum food requirements (without animals). Romans could acquire land for a farm in one of three ways. The most common way to gain land was to purchase the land. Though some lower class citizens did own small pieces of land, they often found it too difficult & expensive to maintain, & would sell it to someone in the aristocracy who had the financial backing to support a farm. Though there were some public lands available to the common person for use, aristocrats also tended to purchase those pieces of land, which caused a great deal of tension between the two classes. Some theorize that “Mass eviction of the poor by the rich underlay the political tensions & civil wars of the last century of the Roman Republic.” Another way to acquire land was as a reward for going to war. High ranking soldiers returning from war would often be given small pieces of public land or land in provinces as a way of paying them for their services. The last way to obtain land was through inheritance. A father could leave his land to his family, usually to his son, in the event of his death.

Cato explained that though some small farms were owned by lower class citizens & soldiers, much of the land was controlled by the noble class of Rome. Land ownership was just one of many distinctions that set the aristocracy apart from the lower classes. Aristocracy would "reorganize small holdings into larger more profitable farms in order to compete with other nobles." It was considered a point of pride to own not just the largest piece of land, but also to have land that grew high quality produce. As Cato wrote "when they would praise a worthy man their praise took this form: 'Good husband good farmer'; it is from the farming class that the bravest men & the sturdiest soldiers come." Careful planning went into every detail of owning & maintaining a farm in Roman culture.

1687 Garden

1687 Spring Garden - April Minnend paar, Anonymous, Crispijn van de Passe (I), Maerten de Vos, 1574-1687

1500s Celebrating in a Garden

Jacob Grimmer (Flemish artist, 1525-1590) Allegory of the Four Seasons - Spring. Here the gentry seem to be gathering to celebrate the arrival of spring, while the peasants work in the gardens behind & husband the animals.

1754 Allegories In a Garden

1754 Spring from The Four Seasons published by Thomas Major London. People appear to work in the walled sunken garden behind the group. A man hands a flower to a young woman sitting on a terrace with her attendant standing behind them.  A boy at right has a parrot perched on his hand.  They are in a garden with a statue of a Venus & an arch at left, through which a couple can be seen in an embrace. Plants in pots dot the area around the group.

1745 Allegories in a Garden

 1745 Spring from The Four Seasons Les Quatre Saisons after Nicolas Lancret  & published in France Here in a garden with a fountain & a birdbath lying on the ground, a young man holding a spade talks to a young woman holding a basket of flowers, while another woman on the right is watering plants.

Men & Women in Gardens

Jacopo Amigoni (Italian artist, c 1682-1752) The Elements - Earth

Men & Women in Gardens

Crispin de Passe (1565-1637), Hortus Voluptatum - Lady and Gentleman Seated in a Spring Garden.  Nobles going out to hunt in the gamepark in the backgroun.

Music, Men & Women in Gardens

 Crispin de Passe (1565-1637), The Four Elements - Earth

Birds, Men & Women in Gardens

 Crispin de Passe (1565-1637), The Four Seasons - Spring