DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16632#0217
i88
History of Garden Art
There were other and more substantial summer-houses like these known to the
ancients, so that it was possible to eat and sleep in them, as in Pliny's little arbour at
the hippodrome. The poet Lydgate seems to have been thinking of that kind as the scene
of the adventure in The Nightingale. It was in a garden with flowers and grass all round,
and shady trees. This garden was entered by the little narrow door mentioned before,
and was placed in front of the knight's house, " where the air is better
and fresher than elsewhere." There "the host has built a high arbour to
sit in every day in summer time; when he eats, he finds the food tastes
very good." Meals in the open (Fig. 137) were extremely popular. The
Brussels picture shows a strongly made arbour, open to the air, and the
scholar who is studying there can go for a change down into the front
garden by a small flight of steps, and there sit awhile on the stone stool,
and carry on his learned meditations (Fig. 138).
Another feature appears very early in the gardens of the period,
and this, too, was meant for retreat or for domestic enjoyment—the
maze or so-called labyrinth. When this first found its way into gardens
is uncertain. The name carries us back to the palace of Minos at Crete:
the story goes, that no one could find the way out of its numerous rooms
without a guide, and in common speech the Greeks used the word in
that sense. The symbol for it was a figure like a circle or a hexagon,
within which were a great many lines crossing each other, and arriving
at a point in the middle from which they led out again to the circum-
ference. At Pompeii, for instance, there is a sign of this sort, and
beneath it the words, "Hie habitat Minotaurus."
In the early Middle Ages the Christian churches adopted the same
figure as a symbol, and it was marked in stone on the floor of a church
and used by penitents. But we are far from sure as to the date when these
mazes appeared in gardens. In
one kind there were paths
between hedges taller than a
man, so that anyone wandering
about and taking a wrong turn
could not see over and set
himself right.
We first hear of a labyrinth
in England in connection with
. FIG. 135. A MAY TREE WITH ARTIFICIAL FRUITS
Henry II., who is said to have
hidden the Fair Rosamond, his beloved, in the woodland retreat at Woodstock; but
the earliest authorities of the fourteenth century only speak of a "House of Daedalus,"
where he kept her hidden away. But at this time the garden labyrinth cannot have been
unknown. We learn that when the English envoy, Bedford, had the Hotel des Tournelles
in Paris replanted to make room for his huge elms, he "had to have the hedges of a
labyrinth, called the House of Daedalus, taken up." Later on, no large garden was complete
without its labyrinth, and in the design of any ground-plan the pattern of the old pre-
Christian maze was for a long time preserved.
History of Garden Art
There were other and more substantial summer-houses like these known to the
ancients, so that it was possible to eat and sleep in them, as in Pliny's little arbour at
the hippodrome. The poet Lydgate seems to have been thinking of that kind as the scene
of the adventure in The Nightingale. It was in a garden with flowers and grass all round,
and shady trees. This garden was entered by the little narrow door mentioned before,
and was placed in front of the knight's house, " where the air is better
and fresher than elsewhere." There "the host has built a high arbour to
sit in every day in summer time; when he eats, he finds the food tastes
very good." Meals in the open (Fig. 137) were extremely popular. The
Brussels picture shows a strongly made arbour, open to the air, and the
scholar who is studying there can go for a change down into the front
garden by a small flight of steps, and there sit awhile on the stone stool,
and carry on his learned meditations (Fig. 138).
Another feature appears very early in the gardens of the period,
and this, too, was meant for retreat or for domestic enjoyment—the
maze or so-called labyrinth. When this first found its way into gardens
is uncertain. The name carries us back to the palace of Minos at Crete:
the story goes, that no one could find the way out of its numerous rooms
without a guide, and in common speech the Greeks used the word in
that sense. The symbol for it was a figure like a circle or a hexagon,
within which were a great many lines crossing each other, and arriving
at a point in the middle from which they led out again to the circum-
ference. At Pompeii, for instance, there is a sign of this sort, and
beneath it the words, "Hie habitat Minotaurus."
In the early Middle Ages the Christian churches adopted the same
figure as a symbol, and it was marked in stone on the floor of a church
and used by penitents. But we are far from sure as to the date when these
mazes appeared in gardens. In
one kind there were paths
between hedges taller than a
man, so that anyone wandering
about and taking a wrong turn
could not see over and set
himself right.
We first hear of a labyrinth
in England in connection with
. FIG. 135. A MAY TREE WITH ARTIFICIAL FRUITS
Henry II., who is said to have
hidden the Fair Rosamond, his beloved, in the woodland retreat at Woodstock; but
the earliest authorities of the fourteenth century only speak of a "House of Daedalus,"
where he kept her hidden away. But at this time the garden labyrinth cannot have been
unknown. We learn that when the English envoy, Bedford, had the Hotel des Tournelles
in Paris replanted to make room for his huge elms, he "had to have the hedges of a
labyrinth, called the House of Daedalus, taken up." Later on, no large garden was complete
without its labyrinth, and in the design of any ground-plan the pattern of the old pre-
Christian maze was for a long time preserved.