The Garden of Earthly Delights: Medieval Gardens and Their Meanings
Medieval Gardens
- Date/time:
- 11 October 2012 - 15 November 2012
Thursdays 10.45am - 12.45pm
- Venue:
- 1 Berkeley Street, London W1J 8DJ
- Lecturer:
- Nicola Lowe
- Fees:
- Full Course (5 lectures) £185.00
Single lecture £42.00
(Includes morning coffee, biscuits and refreshments)
Book your place now on this The Garden of Earthly Delights Course
“A very imaginative course - outstanding lecturer - novel and most informative”
The garden in medieval Europe was more than just a space where nature was cultivated and enjoyed. It was a cultural concept that existed as powerfully in the mind as it did in reality; a potent allegory for contemporary ideas about good and evil, filtered through a Christian consciousness. This course of 5 lectures explores the complex and sometimes contradictory range of meanings carried by the garden in medieval thinking. Sources are drawn from a wide range of medieval and early Renaissance imagery and include expressionistic Romanesque sculpture, exquisite illustrated manuscripts, glowing stained glass, sumptuous panel paintings and tapestries, backed up by references to contemporary music and poetry and a fledgling theatrical tradition.
Course outline
Paradise Lost
Christian history starts in a garden and our first lecture explores the religious connotations of the garden as a little bit of heaven on earth. The Garden of Eden represented Paradise, a place of innocence and perfection, but it was also the site of original sin and mankind’s fall from grace – a tension that was not lost on medieval image-makers.
The Physic Garden
Gardens developed within the closed confines of the monastery. They were originally practical spaces - vegetable plots, orchards and herbariums where plants were raised for culinary and medicinal needs; but they quickly became known for their restorative qualities too, as places of spiritual as well as physical healing. We turn the pages of illustrated botanical texts known as Herbals and wonder at what these early monastic physicians knew - and didn’t know – about curing disease.
Come into the garden, Maud
The garden was an enclosed space surrounded by a wall that kept out animals and intruders alike - a safe, secluded haven where courtly lovers could meet for both licit and illicit exchanges. With reference to medieval poetry and romances such as the 13th century Roman de la Rose and the Carmina Burana, we see how the garden allegorised the process of courtship.
Conspicuous Consumption
With an increasingly sophisticated merchant class, houses developed in ways that expressed the wealth and taste of their owners. The hunting forest on a country estate and the ‘herber’ attached to the town house, were essential additions to the medieval chic address. Menageries, elaborate water features and the latest horticultural ideas were all on display. Our investigation this week concentrates on the fabulous 15th century Devonshire Tapestries.
Paradise Regained
As an enclosed space, the garden in its entirety was an allegory for the perpetual virginity of the Madonna. The birds, animals and plants within it carried further symbolic meanings although these could be as earthy as they were spiritual. This lecture considers garden symbolism in the context of Paradise Lost and Regained.
