Gardens of earthly delight: Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Netherlandish gardens

Abstract

The use of gardens as settings in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Netherlandish art was the subject of an exhibition at the Frick Art Museum, Pittsburgh, of which this publication is the fully illustrated and explanatory catalogue. It comprises four sections: images of the seasons,months, ages and temperaments of man, all of which found their apt symbolic site within a garden; mythological figures such as Vertumnus and Pomona, whose stories are set in gardens; moralizing episodes that use gardens to highlight man's wickedness; outdoor parties (buitenpartijen) in gardens, which Dr Hellerstedt claims is a ‘significant new artistic genre created in the Netherlands in the first decades of the seventeenth century’. Each section is prefaced with a short essay, and each item is accompanied by a detailed descriptive and analytical entry.