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)
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
Credit Line
John L. Severance Fund