17C Woman as Shepherdess (or perhaps Diana)

Jean Leblond 1605-1666  Leonide Bergere; print; Jeremias Falck (Print made by); Paris three-quarter length female shepherdess, stepping to right; a quiver slung across her back, holding a bow in her right hand. This woman has spectacular pearls in her hair, at her neck & wrist.  (ed. - This shepherdess looks like a depiction of Diana.)

Allegory- Jean Couvay (French, c 1605–1663) Harvesting

Jean Couvay (French, c 1605–1663) Allegory of Summer

Economics in the Garden - During Tulip-Mania a Bridegroom Might Accept 1 Tulip Bulb as an Entire Dowery

Gilbert Jackson [English Baroque Era Painter, active 1621-1642] A Lady of the Grenville Family with Tulips in her Hair and her Son

Lynne Galluzzo is a fine gardener & a great storyteller who lives in the town of Haymarket in Prince William County, Virginia.  She tells us that "tulips were something rare & sought after by the wealthy. In 1593, a famous bulb specialist, horticulturalist Carolus Clusius, took some Viennese bulbs with him to Holland. Because he was so boastful & covetous of his tulip bulbs & because he refused to part with them at any price, some angry but enterprising tulip enthusiasts banded together & stole the bulbs from him. Clusius was so broken from this that he gave up cultivating bulbs completely. However, the thieves embarked on tulip production at full throttle. Because the seeds from one tulip can produce many different varieties of flowers, Holland was soon filled with hundreds of different varieties.

Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) Lady Jane Goodwin

"Sometimes one tulip in a garden of perhaps a hundred would bloom differently than the rest. It would unfurl with streaks of a contrasting color on the main body, often called flames, or feathers. That one unusual bulb was the prize bulb that could be sold for large amounts of money; a single bulb could even be used as currency to buy things of value like a house. Legends abound, including one about a miller that exchanged his whole mill for one bulb & a bridegroom that accepted one tulip as sufficient dowry. The Dutch tried some crazy things to increase the frequency of these special blooms, including sprinkling dry pigment powder over beds of white tulip bulbs. Unknown to them, the variations actually came from a virus that was spread from tulip to tulip by aphids. Because the prized, unusual bulbs were caused by a virus, the flowers were beautiful, but sick, & produced less-than-healthy bulbs.

Gilbert Jackson [English Baroque Era Painter, active 1621-1642] Portrait of a Lady with a Lace Collar Holding a Tulip

"Trading in tulip bulbs became so intense that people left thriving occupations to become bulb traders. Where the actual bulbs were once the currency, promissory notes for future bulbs were starting to be traded. Then on February 2, 1637, the auction market opened & there was no one willing to speculate with enormous amounts of money on the pieces of paper that represented a possible future bulb with a special flower. And just like a stock market crashing from over inflated values, the Dutch tulip market tanked. The only thing that survived was the Dutch knowledge & love for growing tulips. Holland is still a major producer of tulip bulbs."

Christine de Bade-Durlach (1645-1705), wife of Albert II de Brandebourg-Ansbach in 1665

You can find more of Lynn Galluzzo's tulip musings & garden insights here at The Piedmont Lifestyle.  

1750 Personification of Spring with a Garden in the background

1750 Spring Published by Robert Sayer London

Here Spring is depicted as a fashionably-dressed young woman with flowers in her hair, picking a rose from a bush on the right, holding others in her apron, She is resting her elbow on a parapet overlooking a garden. In the background, a man is leaning against a garden balustrade and a couple stand in front of a domed garden temple.

1600s Mother & Child in a Walled Garden

1600s Marcus Gheeraerts the younger (Flemish artist, 1561-1635). Lady Anne Cotton (nee Hoghton) with her son John posed in a garden  Most mother with children portraits in the 16-17C are posed indoors.  The Renaissance, from the 14-17C, marked a turning point in portraiture. Artists began to paint secular scenes, breaking away from the dominant religious art of medieval painters. Partly out of interest in the natural world & partly out of nostalgia for classical Greece & Rome, portraits became valued as allegorical objects & as depictions of earthly success & status. The period in Europe was the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages & modern history. The relationship between man & nature was evolving as Francis Bacon (1561-1626) promoted man as "the minister & interpreter of nature." Portraits began to depict the wealthy & the middle class in natural landscapes & in more formal garden settings, where man was obviously controlling the nature around him.

1540s Couple in an Italian Garden

1540s A Man and his Wife pose by a Lemon Tree by Unknown Italian artist  Unsure of the symbolism of the lemon.  Most portraits of couples from this period were shown indoors.  The Renaissance, from the 14-17C, marked a turning point in portraiture. Artists began to paint secular scenes, breaking away from the dominant religious art of medieval painters. Partly out of interest in the natural world & partly out of nostalgia for classical Greece & Rome, portraits became valued as allegorical objects & as depictions of earthly success & status. The period in Europe was the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages & modern history. The relationship between man & nature was evolving as Francis Bacon (1561-1626) promoted man as "the minister & interpreter of nature." Portraits began to depict the wealthy & the middle class in natural landscapes & in more formal garden settings, where man was obviously controlling the nature around him.

1500s Women in Landscapes attributed to Lucas Cranach & his son & their workshops

Lucas Cranach (Northern Renaissance Painter, 1472-1553)  and his workshop  Portrait of Anna Cuspinian 1502

The Renaissance, from the 14-17C, marked a turning point in portraiture. Artists began to paint secular scenes, breaking away from the dominant religious art of medieval painters. Partly out of interest in the natural world & partly out of nostalgia for classical Greece & Rome, portraits became valued as allegorical objects & as depictions of earthly success & status. The period in Europe was the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages & modern history. The relationship between man & nature was evolving as Francis Bacon (1561-1626) promoted man as "the minister & interpreter of nature." Portraits began to depict the wealthy & the middle class in natural landscapes & in more formal garden settings, where man was obviously controlling the nature around him.
Lucas Cranach (Northern Renaissance Painter, 1472-1553) and his workshop  Young Mother and Child

Lucas Cranach (Northern Renaissance Painter, 1472-1553)  and his workshop  Portrait of Frau Reuss 1503

Lucas Cranach (Northern Renaissance Painter, 1472-1553)  and his workshop  María Magdalena

Ladies on horseback trampling Flowery Meades from the Visconti tarot deck by Bonifacio Bembo c.1450

Horsewoman from the Visconti tarot deck by Bonifacio Bembo c.1450

The flowery mead is one of the essential components of many medieval gardens. Poet Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) in his 1348 Decameron painted a vivid picture of what a villa and garden of a wealthy Florentine was like. "In the midst of the garden a lawn of very fine grass, so green it seemed nearly black, coloured with perhaps a thousand kind of flowers…shut in with very green citrus and orange trees bearing, at the same time, both ripe fruit and young fruit and flowers so that they pleased the sense of smell as well as charmed the eyes with shade." This description has its parallels in the tapestries produced during this period…known as the mille fleurs or thousands of flowers.

These images of royal women  & their attendants riding outdoors are on cards from the collection of Visconti Tarot cards of the Cary Collection of Cards, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University. Originally commissioned in the 15C by the Viscontis, a Milanese family that dominated the cultural life of northern Italy in the 14C - 15C, this deck is one of the oldest sets in existence. The cards are attributed to Bonifacio Bembo, an Italian fresco artist who flourished between 1447-1478. The deck includes 11 trump cards, six court cards, including the King, Queen, Male Knight, Female Knight, Male Valet, and Female Valet, as well as the unusual addition of the 3 Theological Virtues - Faith, Hope and Charity. The unique addition of the female knight and valet may be an indication that this set was intended to be used by a female member of court.

Horsewoman from the Visconti tarot deck by Bonifacio Bembo c.1450

These playing cards are remnants of early Italian tarot packs. The tarot, originally a game of uncertain origin, came to be associated with fortune-telling several centuries after its appearance in central Europe in the late 14C. Perhaps the most beautiful surviving example of this form is the Visconti tarot, 67 particularly extravagant hand-painted cards with gold, silver, and miniature Renaissance portraiture.

Horsewoman from the Visconti tarot deck by Bonifacio Bembo c.1450

The complex history of these cards led to the identification of this deck with different names: “Visconti di Modrone Tarot,” from the Milanese noble family that possessed the deck until World War II. and “Filippo Maria Visconti Tarot,” from the name of the man who commissioned it.

16C Garden -Woman in an Enclosed Formal Garden

1505 Jan Provoost (1462-c 1525) Portrait of a Female Donor.  Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. 

Portraits with landscape backgrounds, especially formal gardens, were not common during this period, and the artist may or may not have gone outdoors to paint these outdoor backgrounds. Early depictions of both real & fanciful gardens give us a glimpse of gardens familiar & imagined during this period of time.