DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16632#0088
6o
History of Garden Art
Women kept the festival (which was not officially recognised) and grew attached to
it as an old popular custom, such as is our own May Day. And so the lesser art of
vase-painting took kindly to this subject. An Aryballos at Karlsruhe depicts the scene
(Fig. 49) with a graceful naivete: Aphrodite herself appears, and being a goddess is naked.
She stands on the lowest rung of a ladder, and this shows that she is climbing up to the
roof to carry there a pot for
' flowers (one of the halves of
a jar that has been broken in
two) which Eros is handing to
((->^1——pppp,^ her. The other half of the jar
and another pot are still stand-
' ing on the floor. To the right
and left are Athenian women
making gestures of surprise at
this apparition. On another
M vase we see Aphrodite and
Eros pouring the water from
. . './'■ iH&r - %^Tfci make the seed germinate
jj^^F quic^dy (Fig^ on,^ in
ing seeds in great pots, delighted
when the green began to show.
The reason why Adonis gardens
are so often mentioned, even by Plato, is that the name came to be applied to things of small
importance that produced only short-lived pleasures. But in this cult and in the childish
games we do get the beginnings of gardening in pots. Everybody who had to do
without a garden and yet wanted to adorn the home, found a substitute in these pots,
and Theophrastus bears witness to the fact that in his day pot-gardening was carried
on for other purposes.
The Adonis garden was known even in imperial Rome. When Apollonius of Tyana,
the worker of miracles, was the guest of Domitian at the Palatine in Rome, he found the
FIG. 50. ADONIS GARDEN ON A VASE
History of Garden Art
Women kept the festival (which was not officially recognised) and grew attached to
it as an old popular custom, such as is our own May Day. And so the lesser art of
vase-painting took kindly to this subject. An Aryballos at Karlsruhe depicts the scene
(Fig. 49) with a graceful naivete: Aphrodite herself appears, and being a goddess is naked.
She stands on the lowest rung of a ladder, and this shows that she is climbing up to the
roof to carry there a pot for
' flowers (one of the halves of
a jar that has been broken in
two) which Eros is handing to
((->^1——pppp,^ her. The other half of the jar
and another pot are still stand-
' ing on the floor. To the right
and left are Athenian women
making gestures of surprise at
this apparition. On another
M vase we see Aphrodite and
Eros pouring the water from
. . './'■ iH&r - %^Tfci make the seed germinate
jj^^F quic^dy (Fig^ on,^ in
ing seeds in great pots, delighted
when the green began to show.
The reason why Adonis gardens
are so often mentioned, even by Plato, is that the name came to be applied to things of small
importance that produced only short-lived pleasures. But in this cult and in the childish
games we do get the beginnings of gardening in pots. Everybody who had to do
without a garden and yet wanted to adorn the home, found a substitute in these pots,
and Theophrastus bears witness to the fact that in his day pot-gardening was carried
on for other purposes.
The Adonis garden was known even in imperial Rome. When Apollonius of Tyana,
the worker of miracles, was the guest of Domitian at the Palatine in Rome, he found the
FIG. 50. ADONIS GARDEN ON A VASE