A Garden in the Background - Marcus Gheeraerts the younger 1561-1635 paints mother & son

1600s Marcus Gheeraerts the younger (Flemish artist, 1561-1635). Lady Anne Cotton (nee Hoghton) with her son John

Gardeners Measuring & Planting - Late 1500s

 1594 Thomas Hill's Gardener's Labyrinth 

Discovering a Garden in a Painting Background - 1590 May Flower Market

Spring flowers for sale at the Flower Market - 1590 (Garden in the Background) Spring about 1590 by Frederik I. van Valckenborch (1566-1623)

Garden - May in 1610

1610 Twelve months May print Jacques Callot (Print made by) Adriaen Collaert

1599 Child in a Garden

1599 Unknown artist, Portrait of a Girl aged 4, dated 1599

Discovering a 1645 English manor house Spring Garden in a Portrait Background - now a hotel!

Mathew Babington 1612-1669 of Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, painted in 1645 during the Civil War (1642–1651). Probably painted by Daniel Mytens (Anglo-Dutch artist 1590-1647) or one of his followers.

 Matthew Babington was a lawyer who was called to the bar in 1639. He must have done well during the war, as he is expensively dressed in a black silk doublet slashed in the sleeves & body. He presents himself as very upper-class & very up-to-date. In the background of the portrait appears to be the up-to-date formal gardens of his Rothley Temple, where his family had lived for about 80 years. Gardens grew larger during the Stuart period as the influence of French & Dutch formal gardens brought features such as the long avenues & terraces seen above.  

The Medieval garden was fading from the English countryside, as influences from Renaissance Italy began to infiltrate English Tudor gardens. These included greater regularity of design & the relationship between the garden & the façade of the house, along with architectural features in the layout of the gardens appeared. Knot gardens, geometric beds edged with a low hedge of box or other shrubs appear in this painting. These garden beds of interlacing patterns were designed to be seen from the windows above the garden, & they were usually filled with herbs & popular flowers of the period such as gilly-flowers & carnations.

1729 Map of Rothley Temple Landscape & Gardens.  This shows evidence of a formal garden around the manor house. To the east of the Manor House is an area titled ‘Green Court’ with a barn & dovecote. To the south is a stable & a malt house & to the west are the formal gardens. Between these & the Rothley Brook are 2 stew ponds. There is a mill on the Brook & an orchard beyond, to the south east. 

Rothley Temple originally belonged to the Knights Templar from 1203, then to the Knights Hospitaller until their supression in the 1560s, when it was acquired by the Babingtons. In 1312, the Knights Templars were suppressed by Pope Clement V, who pronounced that the lands which they had held should be handed over to the Knights Hospitaller, in order to continue the support of the cause in the Holy Land. The  Knights Hospitaller, like the Knights Templars, were warrior monks, & already held lands in Leicestershire. They administered their local soke jurisdiction or franchise from Rothley & probably leased out sections of the property to sub-tenants. Soke was the right in Anglo-Saxon & early English law to hold court & administer justice with a granted franchise & to receive certain fees or fines arising from it.  The jurisdiction could be over a territory or over people or some combination of both. Some of the Knights Hospitallers were named within the Rothley court documents, including a number of members of the Babington family, shown as knights in the early 16C. On 24th June 1529, a lease for 29 years was granted to Humphrey Babington, by the Prior & Brethren of the Order of the of the Knights Hospitallers. At the time of the Dissolution of the Knights Hospitaller in 1540, Humphrey Babington retained the manor house & certain of its lands, but the bulk of the estate, which had been owned by the  Knights Hospitallers, reverted to the Crown. 

The Babington lease was subsequently extended but it was not until 1565, during the reign of Elizabeth I, that the entire estate passed to Humphrey Babington, grandson of the Humphrey above. The Babington family continued to hold the manor house & the estate through many generations, until 1845. The house still stands; now known as Rothley Court, it has been an hotel since 1960.

1587 Spring Garden Lucas Van Valkenborch (Flemish painter, c 1530-1597)

1587 Lucas Van Valkenborch (Flemish painter, c 1530-1597)  Landscape in Spring

1587 Lucas Van Valkenborch (Flemish painter, c 1530-1597)  Landscape in Spring Detail

1658 GARDEN planting of Walled Garden with dog or a lion??

1658 Abraham Hertochs (Dutch printmaker, 1626-1672) Wall-enclosed Garden with Raised Geometric Beds. Gentleman & his Lady oversee the springtime work of readying the garden for summer. Gardeners at the back wall seem to be preparing the wall to support vines or wall fruit.  Dog (or small lion!!) runs alongside the masters.

1644 Gardeners carrying out plants in pots & creating geometric Garden beds inside a fence...

1644 David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690) Spring

17C Gardeners Preparing the Garden

1644 David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690) Spring. Love the Gardeners in the background moving pots outdoors and raking the SPRING GARDEN.

1673 Portrait on a Garden Terrace

Henri Gascar (French artist, 1634-35 - 1701) My Lady Anne Barrington and My Lady Mary Saniohn on a terrace opening onto a Spring Garden with statues. c 1673

17C Elegant Flemish Maypole with Garden

Peeter Gijsels (Flemish artist, 1621-1690) Detail of Playing Musical Instruments around a Maypole with a SPRING GARDEN in the background

18C Italian Garden

Vincenzo Martinelli (Italian, 1737 - 1807) Spring Garden

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.

17C Gardens in Portraits of Children from Europe

 1606 Unknown artist, Lettice Newdigate age 2