Flemish Garden drawings and paintings
Vredemann de Vries
Among the painters who experienced the kindness of Rudolph the
Second’s love of art the Dutch stood first. Because of their
alliance with Spain, who ruled the world, the provinces of Flanders
at that time provided a favourable soil for the development
of garden art. From the very beginning Holland had made a
great effort to surpass its natural limitations. With an insatiable
hunger, Flemish artists seized upon the material of the whole
world. Dutch garden art lives for us still in an abundant supply of
pictures, both paintings and woodcuts, and above all in those
copper engravings that the Flemish people loved so dearly. It may
be that with this mass of material individuality was sometimes
wiped out; for in the immense number of pictures of the months and
seasons we find spring and summer, April, May, and generally some
autumn months as well, depicted as garden scenes; and these in the
faithful reproductions of this most realistic kind of art give many
significant details of the style of that day; yet these gardens are
not to be taken as individual portraiture, for the same scene is
often found transferred from one picture to another. For
instance, a painting by Breughel in the Museum at Lille (Fig. 365) and another by Abel Grimmer at
Antwerp (Fig. 366) show exactly the same
garden with scarcely any change in the accessories.
FIG. 365. A FLEMISH STUDY OF SUMMER WORK IN THE GARDEN
|
FIG. 366. A FLEMISH STUDY OF SPRING WORK IN THE GARDEN
|
Again, an Italian goldsmith, finding on two drawings by
Hans Boll certain garden scenes, copies them on an embossed plaque,
adding details of ornament in the Italian style (Fig. 367).
FIG. 367. THE GARDEN IN APRIL; FROM AN EMBOSSED PLAQUE
|
It is still harder to discover what is truly Flemish in the
pictures produced by those Dutch artists who went to earn their
living at foreign courts. There is no doubt that the beautiful
garden landscape by Valckenborch (Fig. 368)
in the museum at Vienna depicts the seat of an Austrian prince,
with labyrinth, pond, and different gardens.

FIG. 368. VIEW OF A GARDEN IN FRONT OF AN AUSTRIAN
TOWN
|
The architectural painter Vredemann de Vries lived and died
at the court of Rudolph II. His numerous garden sketches, which
were published in 1568 and 1583 in a series of engravings called
Hortorum Viridariorumque Formæ, have more of the town
character; and although he chiefly took his examples from the
gardens of his own home, they are best ranked as specimens of the
German style. De Vries was a zealous student of Vitruvius, and
thought that his gardens could have no higher recommendation than
that they were divided as Vitruvius demanded into Doric, Ionic, and
Corinthian. But it is not the fact that there is any real
difference in style. The gardens are very much alike, even in so
far as they try in individual parts to obtain a great variety. At
any one site there are always different gardens divided by hedges
or barriers, and seldom with any axial arrangement. For the most part they have a
tree in the middle, now and then a pavilion ( Fig. 369) with a fountain, and occasionally are
varied with a sunk basin.
FIG. 369. A DUTCH STUDY OF A GERMAN GARDEN WITH ARBOURS
|
Round the grander gardens run pergolas with doors, windows, and
domes (Fig. 370). The arbours are often
supported on pretty pillars with Herms, but there are very few real
statues.
FIG. 370. A DUTCH STUDY OF A GARDEN WITH PERGOLAS AND DOME
|
The beds are always laid out geometrically, and
often have small trees at the corners or in the middle, and borders
of stone or box. Frequently the whole garden is enclosed with
galleries. This sort of parterre is not as a rule next to the
house, which usually has a lawn by it, meant for a playground.
There is not much water, and this is generally treated as a
fountain in the middle, never as a canal unless that is just a
large basin—the sort so commonly found in French gardens of
the same date. If we compare the drawings of de Vries with gardens
that were really carried out at this time, such as the
Kielmann gardens at Vienna ( Fig.
371), the relationship is easy to see.
FIG. 371. THE KIELMANN GARDENS AT VIENNA
|
This important place, in spite of its coherence in general plan,
is divided up into a whole series of separate gardens, each
dominated by a summer-house with which are ranged twin fountains as
chief ornament of the geometrical beds. The bordering of arbour
walks and the entrance gates recall the Schwindt garden, to which
this one is superior in size and magnificence, but not in the
feeling for style.
Next
Previous
|