The Garden of Paradise recasts in a contemporary Hortus Conclusus as an allegory of life before the Fall. Tucked into a protected garden, free from original sin, homage the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus are at ease. The secluded garden offers serenity in a busy...
When Edward Langley, 2nd Duke of York, translated Gaston’s Le livre de chasse (1389) into English, French was still the language of the Court and elsewhere. He renamed it The Master of Game.* Like Chaucer, Edward’s translation decided to write in English...
In The Lives of the Painters, Vasari offers Piero as a preternaturally gloomy man. “As he discoursed,” Vasari says, “he would twist everything to the strangest meanings ever heard.” Why else would an artist paint a wedding picnic dinner ending...
De Predis’ Venus: The garden of delights representing the joyful influence Venus exerts on mortals is an illustration for The Sphere of the Cosmos, De Sphaerae (1466 or later). The original treatise dating from 1230c describes Venus’ feast day celebrated when Venus...
