The Garden of Love (Large Plate)
Medium
engraving
Dimensions
sheet: 23.8 × 16.5 cm · plate: 23.5 × 15.8 cm
Classification
Department
Prints
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
John L. Severance Fund
Accession Number
1993.161
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
male
About this artwork
Master ES’s action-packed scene presents a love garden before a landscape with knights playing jousting games. Love gardens were locales for displaying chaste love, but the behavior here, such as touching and wine drinking between couples at the table, indicates that their love is rather more physical. A traveling poet at the door brings musical enticements, and a man with a fool’s cap in the foreground signifies lust. The many birds throughout the scene refer to coupling, since “birding” was a ...