Painters and The Symbolism of The Landscape Garden
The views in landscape gardens were rarely copied from real nature; they were more often inspired by romantic paintings, particularly those of Nicolas Poussin, Salvator Rosa and Claude Lorrain, who depicted Arcadian landscapes with mythological scenes. In France they were influenced by the paintings and drawings of Hubert Robert, who depicted romantic scenes of crumbling antique ruins seen during his visits to Italy. Robert himself became a garden designer himself, contributing to the landscape garden at Betz and the Hameau de la reine at Versailles.
Landscape Gardens were designed to be allegories, taken from literature and painting, and filled with symbols and messages. They were usually either recreations of the Garden of Paradise, or of the pastoral Arcadia of Roman myths, or they were designed to offer a visual tour of the history of mankind or of all the world. The landscape was not enough – it had to have architecture. The French gardens were filled with fabriques, imitations of Roman temples or ruins or tombs. At Ermenonville, the gardens were ornamented with fabriques representing a Gothic tower, an obelisk, the Temple of Philosophy (left unfinished to represent the incompleteness of human knowledge), and a hermit's hut.
The gardens at Betz, created by the Duc d'Harcourt and the painter Hubert Robert for the Princess of Monaco, were supposed to be a journey around the world. The different parts of the world were represented by an obelisk, a Doric temple, a Chinese kiosk, a Druid temple and the ruins of a medieval chapel. The gardens of the Bagatelle at Paris contained fabriques in the form of the temple of the God Pan, the house of the Chinese philosopher, a Pharaoh's tomb, and a hermit's cell. As the architect Carmontelle wrote about the garden he created at Monceau, "Let us vary the regions so that we may forget where we are. Let us change the scenes of a garden like the decors at the Opera; let us show what the most able painters can offer as decoration; all periods and all places."
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