Hortus conclusus is aLatin term, meaning literally "enclosed garden". Both words inhortus conclusus refer linguistically to enclosure.[1] It describes a type of garden that was enclosed as a practical concern, a major theme in thehistory of gardening, aswalled gardens used to be more commonplace.[2] Thegarden room is a similar feature, usually less fully enclosed.
Having roots in theSong of Songs in the Hebrew scriptures, the termhortus conclusus has importantly been applied as anemblematic attribute and a title of theVirgin Mary inMedieval andRenaissance poetry[3] and art, first appearing in paintings and manuscript illuminations about 1330.[4][5]
The termhortus conclusus is derived from theVulgate Bible'sCanticle of Canticles (also called theSong of Songs orSong of Solomon) 4:12, in Latin: "Hortus conclusus soror mea, sponsa, hortus conclusus, fons signatus" ("A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up.")[6] This provided the shared linguistic culture of Christendom, expressed inhomilies expounding theSong of Songs asallegory where the image of KingSolomon's nuptial song to his bride was reinterpreted as the love and union between Christ and the Church, the mystical marriage with the Church as theBride of Christ.
The verse "Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee" (4.7) from theSong was also regarded as a scriptural confirmation of the developing and still controversial doctrine of Mary'sImmaculate Conception – being born withoutOriginal Sin ("macula" is Latin for spot).
Christian tradition states thatJesus Christ was conceived to Marymiraculously and without disrupting her virginity by theHoly Spirit, the third person of theHoly Trinity. As such, Mary in late medieval and Renaissance art, illustrating the long-held doctrine of theperpetual virginity of Mary, as well as the Immaculate Conception, was shown in or near a walled garden or yard. This was a representation of her "closed off" womb, which was to remain untouched, and also of her being protected, as by a wall, from sin. In theGrimani Breviary, scrolling labels identify the emblematic objects betokening the Immaculate Conception: the enclosed garden (hortus conclusus), the tall cedar (cedrus exalta), the well of living waters (puteus aquarum viventium), the olive tree (oliva speciosa), the fountain in the garden (fons hortorum), the rosebush (plantatio rosae).[7] Not all actual medievalhorti conclusi even strove to include all these details, the olive tree in particular being insufficiently hardy for northern European gardens.
The enclosed garden is recognizable inFra Angelico'sAnnunciation (illustration at above left), dating from 1430-32.
Two pilgrimage sites are dedicated to Mary of the Enclosed Garden in theDutch-Flemish cultural area. One is the statue at the hermitage-chapel inWarfhuizen: "Our Lady of the Enclosed Garden". The second,Onze Lieve Vrouw van Tuine (literally "Our Lady of the Garden"), is venerated at the cathedral ofYpres.
All gardens are by definition enclosed or bounded spaces, but the enclosure may be somewhat open and consist only of columns, low hedges or fences. An actualwalled garden, literally surrounded by a wall, is a subset of gardens. The meaning ofhortus conclusus suggests a more private style of garden.
In thehistory of gardens the High Medievalhortus conclusus typically had a well or fountain at the center, bearing its usual symbolic freight (see "Fountain of Life") in addition to its practical uses.[citation needed] The convention of four paths that divided the square enclosure into quadrants was so strong that the pattern was employed even where the paths led nowhere. All medieval gardens were enclosed, protecting the private precinct from public intrusion, whether by folk or by stray animals. The enclosure might be as simple aswoven wattle fencing or of stout or decorative masonry; or it might be enclosed bytrelliswork tunneled pathways in a secular garden or by an arcadedcloister, for communication or meditative pacing.
The origin of thecloister is in the Roman colonnadedperistyle, as garden histories note.[citation needed] The ruined and overgrownRoman villas that were so often remade as the site ofBenedictine monasteries had lost their planted garden features with the first decades of abandonment: "gardening, more than architecture, more than painting, more than music, and far more than literature, is an ephemeral art; its masterpieces disappear, leaving little trace."[8]Georgina Masson observed: "When, in 1070, theabbey of Cassino was rebuilt,[9] the garden was described as 'a paradise in the Roman fashion'." But it may have been merely "the aura of the great classical tradition" alone that had survived.[10] The ninth-century idealisedplan of Saint Gall (illustration) shows an arcaded cloister with a central well and cross-paths from the centers of each range of arcading. But when a consciously patterned garden was revived for the medieval cloister, the patterning came throughNorman Sicily and its hybrid culture that adapted many Islamic elements, in this case the enclosed North African courtyard gardens, ultimately based on thePersian garden tradition.[citation needed]
The practical enclosed garden was laid out in the treatise byPietro Crescenzi of Bologna,Liber ruralium commodorum, a work that was often copied, as the many surviving manuscripts of its text attest, and often printed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Late medieval paintings andilluminations in manuscripts such as forThe Romance of the Rose – where the garden in the text is largely allegorical – often show a turfed bank for a seat as a feature of thehortus conclusus. Only in the fifteenth century, at first in Italy, did some European gardens begin to look outward.[citation needed]
Sitting, walking and playing music were the activities most often portrayed in the numerous fifteenth-century paintings and illuminated manuscripts, where strenuous activities were inappropriate. In Rome, a late fifteenth-centurycloister at San Giovanni dei Genovesi was constructed for the use of the Genoesenatio, anOspitium Genoensium, as a plaque still proclaims, which provided shelter in cubicles off its vaulted encircling arcades, and a meeting place and shelter reuniting those from the distant home city.[11]
Somewhat earlier, Pietro Barbo, who becamePope Paul II in 1464, began the construction of ahortus conclusus, the Palazzetto del Giardino di San Marco, attached to the Venetian Cardinals' Roman seat, the Palazzo Venezia.[12] It served as Paul's private garden during his papacy; inscriptions stress its secular functions assublimes moenibus hortos...ut relevare animum, durasque repellere curas, a garden of sublime delights, a retreat from cares, and praise it in classicising terms as the home of thedryads, suggesting that there was a central grove of trees, and mentioning its snowy-white stuccoed porticoes. An eighteenth-century engraving shows a tree-covered central mount, which has been recreated in the modern replanting, with box-bordered cross and saltire gravelled paths.[13]
TheFarnese Gardens (Orti Farnesiani sul Palatino – or "Gardens of Farnese upon the Palatine") were created byVignola in 1550 on Rome's northernPalatine Hill, for CardinalAlessandro Farnese (1520–89). These become the first privatebotanical gardens in Europe (the first botanical gardens of any kind in Europe being started by Italian universities in the mid-16th century, only a short time before). Alessandro called his summer home at the siteHorti Farnesiani, probably in reference to thehortus conclusus. These gardens were also designed in the Roman peristylium style with a central fountain.[14]
Again in the age of the automobile, the enclosed garden that had never disappeared inIslamic society became an emblem of serenity and privacy in the Western world.[citation needed]
Thehortus conclusus was one of a number of depictions of the Virgin in the late Middle Ages developed to be more informal and intimate than the traditional hieratic enthroned Virgin adopted from Byzantine icons, or theCoronation of the Virgin.[citation needed] The subject began as a specific metaphor for theAnnunciation,[16] but tended to develop into a relaxedsacra conversatione, with several figures beside the Virgin seated, and less specific associations. Germany and the Netherlands in the 15th century saw the peak popularity of this depiction of the Virgin, usually with Child, and very often a crowd of angels, saints and donors, in the garden; the garden by itself, to represent the Virgin, was much rarer. Often walls ortrellises close off the sides and rear, or it may be shown as open, except for raised banks, to a landscape beyond. Sometimes, as with aGerard David'sThe Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor (below) the garden is very fully depicted; at other times, as inengravings byMartin Schongauer, only a wattle fence and a few sprigs of grass serve to identify the theme. Italian painters typically also keep plants to a minimum, and do not have grass benches. A sub-variety of the theme was the German "Madonna of the Roses", sometimes attempted in sculpturedaltarpieces. The image was rare in Orthodoxicons, but there are at least some Russian examples.[17]
One type of depiction, not usually compatible with correct perspective, concentrates on showing the whole wall and several garden structures or features that symbolize the mystery of Christ's conception, mostly derived from theSong of Songs or other Biblical passages as interpreted by theological writers. These may include one or more temple or church-like buildings, anIvory Tower (SS 7.4), an open-air altar withAaron's rod flowering, surrounded by the bare rods of the other tribes, a gatehouse "tower of David, hung with shields" (SS 7.4),[18] with the gate closed, theArk of the Covenant, a well (often covered), a fountain, and the morning sun above (SS 6.10).[19]This type of depiction usually shows the Annunciation, although sometimes the child Jesus is held by Mary.[20]
A rather rare, late 15th century, variant of this depiction was to combine the Annunciation in thehortus conclusus with theHunt of the Unicorn andVirgin andUnicorn, so popular in secular art. The unicorn already functioned as a symbol of theIncarnation and whether this meaning is intended in manyprima facie secular depictions can be a difficult matter of scholarly interpretation. There is no such ambiguity in the scenes where the archangelGabriel is shown blowing a horn, as hounds chase the unicorn into the Virgin's arms, and a little Christ Child descends on rays of light from God the Father. TheCouncil of Trent finally banned this somewhat over-elaborated, if charming, depiction,[21] partly on the grounds of realism, as no one now believed the unicorn to be a real animal. In the 16th century the subject of thehortus conclusus drifts into the open airSacra Conversazione and the Madonnas in a landscape ofGiovanni Bellini,Albrecht Dürer andRaphael, where it is hard to say if an allusion is intended.
An exhibition of later medieval visual representations ofhortus inclusus was mounted atDumbarton Oaks, Washington DC;[22] the exhibition drew a distinction between "garden representations as thematic reinforcements and those that seemingly treat the garden as a subject in itself"; in reviewing it Timothy Husband, warned against uncritical interpretation of the refined detail in manuscript illuminations' "seemingly objective representation". "Late medieval garden imagery, by subjugating direct observation to symbolic or allegorical intention, reflects more a state of mind than reality,"[23] if a disjunct can be detected where the objects of the world shimmered with pregnant allegorical meaning. South Netherlandish illuminations and painting appear to document the "turf benches, fountains, raised beds, 'estrade'[24] trees, potted plants, walkways, enclosing walls,trellises,wattle fences andbowers" familiar to contemporary viewers, but assembled into an illusion of reality.[25]
The concept for the 2011Serpentine Gallery Pavilion was thehortus conclusus, a contemplative room, a garden within a garden. Designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor and with a garden created byPiet Oudolf, the Pavilion was a place abstracted from the world of noise and traffic and the smells of London – an interior space within which to sit, to walk, to observe the flowers.[26]
Martínez, Adriana: Espacio evocado, espacio representado: el tópico bíblico del Paraíso en el Medioevo. Durango-Muñetón, Sebastián: Apuntes sobre el hortus conclusus.Durango-Muñetón, Sebastián: El jardín cerrado en Bernardo de Claraval.
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