The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 29, 2024

The Garden of Love (Large Plate)

The Garden of Love (Large Plate)

c. 1465
(German, active 1450–67)
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.)
Catalogue raisonné: Lehrs 215
Location: not on view

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.
  • ?-c.1948/50
    Count Maltzan, Militsch (Lugt supp. 3024a, not stamped)
    c. 1960
    Dr. Otto Schäfer, Schweinfurt (Lugt 5881, stamped, verso)
    June, 1992
    his auction, Galerie Kornfeld, Bern, no. 207, under lot 19
    1993
    with Helmut H. Rumbler, Frankfurt
  • Husband, Timothy. The Medieval Housebook & the Art of Illustration. New York: Frick Collection, 1999. p. 56, fig. 20
    "1993 Annual Report." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 6 (1994): 143-218. Reproduced: p. 165 www.jstor.org
    Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 346-347
    Bagnoli, Martina, ed. A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe. Baltimore: The Walters Art Museum, 2016. Reproduced: pp. 249-250, cat. # 118
    Peters, Emily J. "Love Gardens/Forbidden Fruit: Nature and landscape before 1600." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine vol. 63, no. 2 (2023): 12-13. Reproduced and Mentioned: P. 12.
  • Love Gardens / Forbidden Fruit. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 2-October 29, 2023).
    A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe. John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL (organizer) (February 4-April 30, 2017).
    Imagining the Garden. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 24, 2015-March 6, 2016).
    Treasures on Paper from the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 9-June 8, 2014).
    The Medieval Housebook: The Real and the Ideal--A Fifteenth-Century View of Life. Frick Collection, New York, NY (organizer) (May 17-July 11, 1999).
    Love and War: A Manual for Life in the Late Middle Ages. National Gallery of Art (organizer) (November 8, 1998-January 31, 1999).
    Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Prints 1400-1800, cat. no. 24.
  • {{cite web|title=The Garden of Love (Large Plate)|url=false|author=Master ES|year=c. 1465|access-date=29 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1993.161