The Garden of Love (Large Plate)

Description

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 euphemism for the sex act.

Provenance

Count Maltzan, Militsch (Lugt supp. 3024a, not stamped) (?-c.1948/50); Dr. Otto Schäfer, Schweinfurt (Lugt 5881, stamped, verso) (c. 1960); his auction, Galerie Kornfeld, Bern, no. 207, under lot 19 (June, 1992); with Helmut H. Rumbler, Frankfurt (1993)

The Garden of Love (Large Plate)

Master ES

c. 1465

Accession Number

1993.161

Medium

engraving

Dimensions

Plate: 23.5 x 15.8 cm (9 1/4 x 6 1/4 in.); Sheet: 23.8 x 16.5 cm (9 3/8 x 6 1/2 in.)

Classification

Print

Museum

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland, United States

Credit Line

John L. Severance Fund