Abstract
From Johannes Vermeer and his friend and neighbor Antonie van Leeuwenhoek of Delft to Thomas Babington Macaulay’s History of England, Lord Byron and Sir Kenneth Clark, we examine the minutiae of re-inventing the garden motif in human consciousness. Wheresoever we hail the landscape, its meaning (étumon), “true sense” compresses human qualities into a scene of identification, fundamental to the anthropic bias that has co-evolved in the very guise of our physiological outreach, our senses and our normal abilities to walk toward a horizon, or pluck an apple from a tree and eat it. As we have described in some detail elsewhere, every human myth, allegory, and pictorial invention follows a trajectory informed by the conflation of an anthropomorphic lexicon.
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Notes
- 1.
See Sin -Ichi Fukuoka’s Vermeer: Realm of Light – Travels through art and science in pursuit of the greatest artist of the Golden Age, Kirakusha Inc., Tokyo, 2015, Chapter 7: “A Certain Hypothesis,” pp. 239–251.
- 2.
See “The Monsoon Maritime Glaciers In The Southeastern Part Of Xizang,” by Li Ji-jun and Zheng Ben-xing, in Geological And Ecological Studies Of Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, Proceedings Of Symposium On Qinghai-Xizang (Tibet) Plateau, Beiing, China, Volume II, Environment And Ecology Of Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, Science Press, Gordeon and Breach, Inc., New York, 1981, p. 1601.
- 3.
Leonardo’s Paradox – Word and Image in the Making of Renaissance Culture, by Joost Keizer, Reaktion Books, London, 2019, pp. 144–145.
- 4.
See After Eden: History, Ecology & Conscience, by M.C.Tobias, Avant Books, San Diego, CA 1985, pp. 91–92.
- 5.
See Nature and Its Symbols, by Lucia Impelluso, Translated by Stephen Sartarelli, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA 2003.
- 6.
See The Illustrated History Of Art, by David Piper, Chancellor Press, London, 1981, p. 62.
- 7.
Jacques Élie Faure, the Five-Volume History of Art, Volume 2, Mediaeval Art, Translated From the French By Walter Pach, Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 1937, p. 342.
- 8.
ibid., p. 354.
- 9.
op. cit., After Eden, p. 91.
- 10.
1850–1859, iii. 1., p. 351, as cited under “Suburban,” “Su – Sz.” The Oxford English Dictionary, p. 71, Volume X, Oxford, UK, Reprinted 1961.
- 11.
Law Times, LXX. 130/2, ibid.
- 12.
Landscape into Art, by Kenneth Clark, John Murray, London, 1949, p. 19.
- 13.
Landscape Painting – A History, by Nils Büttner, Translated by Russell Stockman, Abbeville Press Publishers, New York, 2000, p. 142.
- 14.
Eryri, the Mountains of Longing, An interpretation and case study by Amory Lovins, with photographs by Philip Evans and an introduction by Sir Charles Evans, Edited by David R. Brower, The Earth’s Wild Places: 5, Friends of the Earth, San Francisco, 1972, pp. 78–79.
- 15.
See “The History of Birkenhead Park,” Wirral, https://web.archive.org/web/20080626164507/http://www.wirral.gov.uk/LGCL/100006/200073/670/content_0001110.html, Accessed March 19, 2020.
- 16.
- 17.
See “The Legacy of Central Park: How Downing, Vaux and Olmsted Set the Standard for American Parks,” n.a., FBW – Fund for a Better Waterfront, August 30, 2018, https://betterwaterfront.org/the-legacy-of-central-park-how-downing-vaux-and-olmsted-set-the-standard-for-american-parks/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIzMOji9Cn6AIVh5WzCh1-_gyoEAAYASAAEgI8nvD_BwE, Accessed March 19, 2020
- 18.
See detail on p. 9 of The Enchanted Garden – Images Of Delight, by Bryan Holme, Oxford University Press, New York, 1982. See also, the many dozens of paradise scenes by Savery in Kurt J. Müllenmeister’s Roelant Savery, Die Gemälde Mit Kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Luca Verlag Freren, 1988; See also, The Garden Of Eden – The Botanic Garden and the Re-Creation of Paradise, by John Prest, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut and London, 1981, particularly p. 45, with its reproduction of The Garden at Leyden from P. Paaw’s Hortus publicus acadmiae Lugdunum-Batavae, 1601.
- 19.
In the essay entitled, “The Joy Of Gardens,” by Richard Le Gallienne, in Corners Of Grey Old Gardens With Illustrations In Colour by Margaret Waterfield, T.N. Foulis, Ltd., Edinburgh & London, 1914, p. 151.
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Tobias, M.C., Morrison, J.G. (2021). Metaphysical Landscapes. In: On the Nature of Ecological Paradox. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_58
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