1465
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Garden of Love (Large Plate) is a 1465 by Master E.S., a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a crowded garden party: couples flirting, knights jousting, musicians playing, and birds fluttering everywhere. This was a “love garden,” a place where nobles showed off polite romance. But here, the couples are touching, drinking wine, and ignoring the rules. A jester in a fool’s cap grins in the front—his job was to poke fun at lust. Even the birds hint at sex; “birding” meant hooking up back then. Look up more works in the subject: germany to see how artists played with these same ideas.
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.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Master E. S. (c. 1420 – c. 1468; previously known as the Master of 1466) is an unidentified German engraver, goldsmith, and printmaker of the late Gothic period. He was the first major German artist of old master prints…
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