Hortus Conclusus Research Articles

Breaching the Hortus Conclusus: L.M. Montgomery’s Una of the Garden and Kilmeny of the Orchard

Una of the Garden and Kilmeny of the Orchard can be reread using the hortus conclusus (enclosed garden) motif as a lens to explore how romance and the realistic code collide and so embody L.M. Montgomery’s ambivalence regarding romantic love. The motif connects Una’s/Kilmeny’s space to Eden, as represented in Genesis 1 to 3 and in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and to the garden in the biblical Song of Songs, in complex evocations of imprisonment/liberation and protection/invasion.

Hortus Conclusus: A Mariological Symbol in Some Quattrocento Annunciations, According to Church Fathers and Medieval Theologians

This paper seeks to interpret the biblical metaphor of the hortus conclusus (closed garden) according to a Mariological projection, as presented iconographically in various Quattrocentro Annunciations. The author bases his interpretations on the exegesis developed by many Latin and Greek-Eastern Church Fathers and theologians, who considered this metaphorical expression of the Song of Songs to symbolize Mary’s virginal divine motherhood and perpetual virginity. Their textual interpretations of this doctrine helps elucidate the Mariological meaning in six Quattrocento paintings that include a more or less explicit “closed garden.” These six paintings present a closed garden as a visual metaphor illustrating the Mariological dogmas unveiled by the Church Fathers and theologians when explaining this biblical metaphor.

Hortus conclusus. La Sacra Famiglia lauretana di Lorenzo Lotto

"Hortus conclusus. The Holy Family of Loreto by Lorenzo Lotto. The contribution is an excerpt from Dalla parte di Lorenzo Lotto. Il ciclo lauretano (On the Side of Lorenzo Lotto: The Loreto Cycle), an essay to be completed soon on the pictorial cycle which Lorenzo Lotto (Venice, 1480-Loreto, 1556) ordered in 1555 in the chapter chapel of the church of Santa Maria di Loreto. This is the painter’s last work for a public destination; due to the difficulties in providing a unitary and coherent interpretation, the cycle risks being expunged from Lotto’s catalogue despite the indication made both by Giorgio Vasari in the 1568 edition of the Vite (Lives) and by Carlo Ridolfi in 1648 in Le Meraviglie dell’arte: ovvero Le vite degl’illustri pittori veneti (The Wonders of Art: The Lives of the Illustrious Venetian Painters). Of the seven works making up the cycle, the Holy Family is one of the five painted before 1550, some of which had to be adapted to harmonize their format. The painter intervened on the Holy Family in order to adapt the content of the painting, originally intended for domestic devotion, and make it suitable for the new destination. Keywords: Lorenzo Lotto, Santa Maria di Loreto, Giorgio Vasari, the Holy Family "

Hortus Conclusus—A Mariological Metaphor in Some Renaissance Paintings of the Annunciation in the Light of Medieval Liturgical Hymns

This article seeks to shed light on the doctrinal meanings of the closed garden included in some Renaissance paintings of the Annunciation. To justify the iconographic interpretations that we will give of these paintings, we will base them on the analysis of many medieval liturgical hymns that poetically designate the Virgin Mary through the metaphorical expression hortus conclusus (closed garden) with which the Husband or Bridegroom requisites the Wife or Bride in the Song of Songs. We will divide our article into two parts as a strategy for analysis. First, we will analyze an extensive series of fragments of liturgical hymns that repeatedly praise Mary through this biblical metaphor. In the second part, we will examine some artistic representations of the Annunciation that, in the Italian Renaissance, depict a closed garden in the scene. From this double comparative analysis, textual and iconic, we will conclude that, in direct and essential correlation, those hymnic texts and those paintings clearly illustrate that the hortus conclusus is an eloquent symbol of the virginal divine motherhood of Mary and her perpetual virginity, as well as the excellence and fullness of her supernatural virtues and privileges.

BACK TO PARADISE: EXPERIENCES WITH FANALES AS A TOOL FOR APPROACHING THE RENEWAL SPACE

This article aims to show the complex object of a fanal -a glass lantern where a sculpture of Baby Jesus surrounded by miniatures depicting nature dwells- as a three-dimensional representation of the hortus conclusus. The reflection and data provided, show this object as a garden to take care of and as a reminder of the search and mental pilgrimage to the renewal space.

The art of propaganda: marketing nationhood through visual imagery

PurposeDuring the 17th century, the Dutch Republic sought to project a positive global image centred around the principles of economic endeavour, moral stewardship and military resilience. By illustrating one way in which the country sought to communicate its international position, the paper aims to provide an early example of political diplomacy and reputation management.Design/methodology/approachPictorial narratives provide an important but often underutilised insight into our cultural, social and economic history. As works of art were considered legitimate and authoritative forms of communication, their importance can lie beyond any aesthetic accomplishment. Using established iconographic techniques, this paper deconstructs and interprets the meaning contained within a specific genre painting, The Young Mother (1658) by Gerrit Dou.FindingsRather than being devoid of meaning, The Young Mother represents a narrative purposely constructed to symbolise the cultural, religious and economic character of the United Provinces. It celebrates success through global trade, innovation and enterprise while simultaneously reminding audiences of the country’s moral and spiritual foundations. Like the patriotic allegory of De Hollandse Maag protecting the sacred space of the hortus conclusus, the painting is a secular representation of the new Loca Sancta.Originality/valueWhile acknowledging that The Young Mother has been praised for its visual qualities, this paper maintains that any broader political significance has been largely overlooked. The analysis and findings therefore offer original interpretations from which new conclusions are drawn.

C.G. JUNG, J.J. HONEGGER, AND THE CASE OF EMIL SCHWYZER (THE ‘SOLAR PHALLUS’ MAN)

The case of Emil Schwyzer, a.k.a. the ‘Solar-Phallus Man’, was foundational in giving shape to Jung’s early reflections on the concept of the collective unconscious. In 1906 Schwyzer identified a tail of light coming off the sun as a phallus, which Jung interpreted as a particularly important example of ‘the fantasies or delusions of…patients…[being] paralleled in mythological material of which they knew nothing’ (Bennet 1985:69). This was because it represented not only a single mythological symbol or idea that Schwyzer could not have known but an entire passage from an ancient document known as the Mithras Liturgy. According to Jung, Schwyzer’s ‘vision’ also paralleled a rare theme in Medieval art. Jung’s student J.J. Honegger gave a paper on the Schwyzer case at the March 1910 Second Psychoanalytic Congress in Nuremberg. In it he again discussed Schwyzer’s description of the light tail on the sun but especially his concept of a Ptolemaic flat earth. Relying largely on archival material not previously discussed, the present article provides a history of the Schwyzer case along with a thoroughgoing evaluation of what Jung and Honegger made of it. KEYWORDS J.J. Honegger, Emil Schwyzer, ‘Solar-Phallus Man’, Mithras Liturgy, Collective unconscious, Inherited ideas, Hortus Conclusus.

A binational temple for a transnational Virgin: the construction of the Argentine-Uruguayan Hortus Conclusus sanctuary in Palestine

ABSTRACT The article studies the construction process of the Argentine-Uruguayan Hortus Conclusus sanctuary, inaugurated in Palestine in 1902. It focuses on the project’s diffusion and the construction of solidarity networks between Latin America, Rome and Palestine articulated by the Archbishop of Montevideo Mariano Soler. The central argument is that the case studied exhibits some particularities of the “global turn” of the Catholic Church in the Río de la Plata, which rather than being a passive recipient of congregations, images and devotions received from European “centers” of Catholic renovation, functioned as a dynamic space of appropriation and even universalization for many of these forms and images. This can be perceived by reconstructing the life of transnational agents and projects that linked different places in the world, amplifying the global consciousness of Catholicism at the local, national, and continental levels. Also, the article exemplifies how a Marian devotion was able to function as a symbolic space in service of political identities, and as a vehicle for (trans)national movements.

Z33 Hasselt: Hortus Conclusus as a Model for an Urban Interior

This contribution reviews the recent renovation of Z33—House for Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture in Hasselt, Belgium—in the light of its unique implementation of different levels of interiority. The institute is housed in the former beguinage, a site with a rich and layered history and one of the few green public spaces in the city centre. The intervention by architect Francesca Torzo builds further on and strengthens the existing qualities of the site through a creative process of copying and improving. By doing so, she changed the overall appearance of the beguinage, strengthening its quality as an enclosed public space—an intimate yet collective hortus conclusus.

The Coral Altar with the Apocalyptic Woman in the Treasury of St Mary’s Basilica in Krakow. Theological Contents

The Polish version of the article was published in “Roczniki Humanistyczne,” vol. 64 (2016), issue 4.
 In Polish museum collections there are a few objects made of coral or decorated with it. They are, among others, altars, holy water fonts, crucifixes and other liturgical items. Most often they were bought during Poles’ travels to Italy in the Mannerism and Baroque epochs. St Mary’s Basilica’s treasury boasts of a portable coral altar dated to the middle of the 17th century, a gift from Maria Josepha, the wife of King Augustus III. It has a golden frame and is embellished with enamel and coral. Its centre features the figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary standing on a crescent, in a radiant coral glory, surrounded by Marian symbols. It is an apotheosis of the Blessed Virgin Mary based on a fragment of the Apocalypse of St John. The figure of Mary is presented with her cosmic attributes: twelve stars around her head; she is clothed with a radiant glory; and she has a crescent under her feet. Around her seven symbolic biblical signs are presented, ones connected in the exegetic tradition with her being the mother of the Messiah. The term Cedrus exaltata—is perceived as the symbol of majesty, sublimity, loftiness, paradisaical beauty, safety. Fons signatus is a sealed spring, an enclosed one, accessible only to the Mother of God’s Son, chosen by God. Hortus conclusus is the symbol of St Mary’s virginity. Oliva speciosa points to St Mary’s charity, her extraordinary fertility, inner peace, the gift of relieving sufferings. Rosa plantata is a metaphor of wisdom, love, medicine for sinners. Puteus aquarum viventium, a well of living waters, indicates St Mary’s mediation for people redeemed by Jesus. Turris eburnea—the ivory tower is another feature of the Virgin Mary’s beauty, of her immaculate body and fortitude.

CONTEMPORARY DISCOURSES ON ARCHITECTURE, CITY AND TERRITORY: VISUAL SPACES OF CHANGE

One of the main interests of this panel was to explore the relationships between virtual dimensions of photography and concrete physical realities in contemporary discourses on Architecture, City and Territory. We wanted to discuss, among other things, how constructed and manipulated images that suggest a new reading or create new idealised scenarios of existing architectural and public spaces may be used to cross or infringe certain borders people are bound in their daily lives as a way to act upon reality, fabricating new relationships between individuals and the collective public. A number of relations between the artistic strategies developed by the authors of this panel could be examined, focusing on the various methods they used for the construction of visual narratives between the virtual world of photography, manipulated visual constructs and the field of architecture in contemporary discourse. In this way, it was possible to discuss and examine today’s possibilities of image creation with digital tools that expand and potentiate significantly the practice of photography on creating imaginary environments of present architecture and public spaces. In fact, the projects presented went far beyond traditional objective approaches, exploring the fictional universe and making critical readings of existing spaces, going against the undiscerning saturated media consumption of architectural images. Starting with the text “HC (hortus conclusus)” written by the panel’s keynote speaker Beate Gütschow – an amazing artist who came from the world of realistic painting towards photography medium, having studied with Bernhard Johannes and Wolfgang Tillmans – it can be said that her body of work questions in a very significant way the likeness of photography, being also political and critical towards the notion of truth associated to this media. [...]

HC (HORTUS CONCLUSUS)

HC stands for hortus conclusus, a Latin term that means “enclosed garden”.In the HC series, the principles of medieval art with regard to pictorial space and perspective are applied to photography. In the Middle Ages, many images were rendered in parallel perspective; the viewpoint is always elevated. I have employed these spatial representations in my images. You will find these principles in many images of gardens in medieval book illustrations. Linear perspective was not developed until the Late Middle Ages; prior to this, artists employed multiple perspectives. These did not obey a particular spatial logic; instead, the available perspectives served a narrative purpose. If the narrative required a scene to be set in a particular place, this space was “opened out”, while the remaining space was shown as a flatter plane. [...]

Naturally Artificial: The Pre-Raphaelite Garden Enclosed

Naturally Artificial:The Pre-Raphaelite Garden Enclosed Dinah Roe (bio) The garden historian Brent Elliott tells us that the mid-Victorian revival of the enclosed garden "was not primarily a scholarly movement" but an artistic one and cites depictions of such gardens in the pictures of "many of the Pre-Raphaelite circle" as evidence.1 W. H. Mallock's satirical 1872 recipe for making "a modern Pre-Raphaelite poem" also recognizes the prominence of the walled garden motif in Pre-Raphaelite work. Among his key ingredients are "damozels" placed "in a row before a stone wall, with an apple-tree between each and some large flowers at their feet."2 He is probably thinking of the frontispiece of William Morris's The Earthly Paradise, a volume whose title evokes an enclosed garden; as the landscape architects Rob Aben and Saskia De Wit point out, the word "Paradise is derived from the Persian word Pairidaeza, literally meaning 'surrounded by walls.'"3 I want to demonstrate that it is this sense of what the garden theorist Stephanie Ross calls "surroundedness" that attracts Pre-Raphaelites to the enclosed garden. Ross writes that "being surrounded" provides "a basic sensory and kinesthetic" experience signifying "comfort, security, passivity, rest, privacy, intimacy, sensory focus, and concentrated attention."4 Walled gardens, in other words, provide the material and metaphorical conditions for experiencing and making art. Focusing on Christina Rossetti's poems "On Keats" (1849) and "Shut Out" (1856), Charles Collins's painting Convent Thoughts (1851), and William Morris's poem "The Defence of Guenevere" (1858), I want to examine the ways in which Pre-Raphaelitism begins to conceive of the walled garden as an analogue of both contemporary art and artistic consciousness.5 I will argue that the Pre-Raphaelite revival of the enclosed garden modernizes what was once a medieval space by remaking the traditional hortus conclusus in the image of the nineteenth-century artistic mind. Furthermore, I will demonstrate how the enclosed garden's paradoxical nature (open/closed, natural/artificial, free/constrained) contributes to the Pre-Raphaelite portrayal of consciousness [End Page 131] as fluid, multivalent, and self-generating. The early examples of enclosed gardens discussed here are important because they dramatize tensions that lie at the very heart of Pre-Raphaelitism, a movement whose pursuit of "truth to nature" can seem at odds with the requirements of artistic representation. Understood in the context of the horticultural revival of the enclosed garden, these artistic depictions of garden space can refine how we interpret the movement's realism. Despite the Pre-Raphaelites' reputation for representing the natural world with "microscopic" intensity, their interest in nature is not primarily scientific or botanical; they do not seek to make discoveries about cellular structure or the cultivation of plant species but rather to discover in the natural world "truths" about human nature and the artistic imagination.6 I will argue that Pre-Raphaelite portrayals of enclosed gardens celebrate interiority, subjectivity, and generative consciousness, privileging the mind over nature. I want to begin by suggesting that early Pre-Raphaelite representations of walled gardens participate in the "revolution in aesthetics" that Brent Elliott identifies in the nineteenth-century "overthrow of the landscape garden" (p. 7). Eighteenth-century landscape gardens encouraged garden visitors to "follow nature" by arranging "garden features" and "scenery" to "inevitably invoke particular responses" (p. 8). Seeking to imitate the natural world, these gar-dens concealed their own artificiality by disguising their borders and boundaries, making them appear as part of the "natural" landscape. For example, ha-has, woodlands, and sunken ditches were designed to draw attention away from themselves as aesthetic objects and from human intervention in the garden.7 Horace Walpole's influential essay "On Modern Gardening" promotes this approach, recommending that the English garden should aspire to "no other art than that of softening Nature's harshness and copying her graceful touch."8 Elliot argues that the Victorian drive to expose "the artistic and unnatural character of the garden" registers a broader philosophical shift from concern with "the qualities of the material world" to "the relation of that world to the mind" (pp. 10, 7–8). The nineteenth-century mind no longer regarded itself as a Lockean...

Barragán y el oficio de crear lugares

El trabajo explora las estrategias proyectuales y recursos arquitectónicos empleados con singular oficio por Luis Barragán para dar forma a la idea de lugar. Se observan los recintos interiores y exteriores que componen su casa y la cuadra San Cristóbal, dos de sus obras más destacadas. Estas últimas se analizan en vinculación a la noción de Raum desarrollada por varios actores del contexto cultural y disciplinar de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, como así también en torno al empleo del hortus conclusus como recurso para generar pequeños universos de escape hacia el intimismo y la individualidad. A partir del análisis de los casos bajo esta óptica se pretende verificar la relación entre los planteamientos teóricos y disciplinares con los que Barragán mantuvo contacto y su producción concreta.

Readings in Medieval Textuality: Essays in Honour of A. C. Spearing ed. by Cristina Maria Cervone, and D. Vance Smith

Reviewed by: Readings in Medieval Textuality: Essays in Honour of A. C. Spearing ed. by Cristina Maria Cervone, and D. Vance Smith Cheryl Taylor Cervone, Cristina Maria, and D. Vance Smith, eds, Readings in Medieval Textuality: Essays in Honour of A. C. Spearing, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2016; cloth; pp. xxxvi, 248; 5 b/w illustrations, 1 b/w plate; R.R.P. £60.00; ISBN 9781843844464. Compiled by leading scholars in American and English universities, this Festschrift contains an overview of approaches taken to medieval poetry since A. C. Spearing published his first book, Criticism and Medieval Poetry, in 1964. The editors have created a unity rare in such collections by returning to contributors' personal acquaintance with Spearing and/or responses to his ideas as points of reference. Moreover, except for J. A. Burrow's stimulating consignment of the Confessio [End Page 153] Amantis and the Canterbury Tales to the genre of dits, and Ardis Butterfield's elegant manuscript study of 'Maiden in the Mor Lay', each essay builds its argument around selected, usually short, passages from Chaucer, Langland, Gower, the Gawain-poet, or the lyrists. The contents therefore justify the title's respect for 'textuality', which has always been central to Spearing's approach(p. xviii). While the reader may sometimes feel herself to be 'roaming' like Emily in an academic hortus conclusus, the parameters imposed by the editors and the seasoned talents of the writers have produced a collection of the highest quality. Backed by Peter Baker's list of Spearing's publications, Cristina Maria Cervone's and D. Vance Smith's introduction reviews his creative applications over decades of his own and others' thinking on formalism, close reading, subjectivity, narratology, autography, and the pleasure of the text, and traces influences on his work that were at different times contrary (F. R. Leavis, C. S. Lewis, D. W. Robertson) and nurturing (Elizabeth Salter, Helen Cooper). Pointing to his 'drawing on theories from other disciplines or other areas of literary studies, notably film theory' (p. xviii), the editors find in Spearing's publications an adaptability and breadth of learning that might well serve apprentice critics as a model. Baker's and Elizabeth Fowler's 'appreciations' in Chapter 13, and Cervone's transcription from the 1950s of mysterious verses 'apparently by the Gawain-poet' (pp. 219–22), testify to the flourishing of wit and good will in an enclave of humane studies which—as readers who share its values believe—inherently opposes the barbarism of our time. Since the editors further assist readers by summarizing each essay (pp. xxiv–xxvii), I will deal in what follows with what I regard as highlights and a few dark spots in the collection. David Aers's reminiscence of Spearing's tactful guidance pinpoints the striking reversal that has taken place in medieval literary studies since the 1980s, when 'ideological glossing and language' were encouraged to 'dominate and colonize' medieval texts (p. 87). In an essay that rewrites what he now regards as his former unsympathetic application of the 'discourses of psychoanalysis', Aers analyses Troilus's conversion to love, metaphysical questing, despair, and accompanying winning and losing of moral virtue in the light of Augustinian theology and metaphysics (pp. 88–95). Chaucer, he thinks, recognized the impasse, unresolved even in Boethius, to which anguished consideration of the contradiction between human free will and God's foreknowledge brings Troilus, whose ultimate fate as a pagan remains ambiguous. However, 'the beautiful closing prayer to the Trinity', which Aers quotes, expresses the hope sustained by Chaucer and his fellow Christians that grace and a love 'proportionate to human nature' might lead them at last to the 'pleyn felicite' of heaven (p. 95). Like Aers's essay, those by Derek Pearsall, Fowler, Claire M. Waters, Michael Calabrese, Butterfield, and Cervone demonstrate how much intellectual distance sensitive close readings, even of textual minutiae, can traverse. The essays in this collection contrast, and in my view vary in quality, according to their use and placement of such readings. By drawing on her researching or teaching of the [End Page 154] Latin beast epic Ysengrimus, Coleridge's 'Frost at Midnight', Chaucer's ballade 'To Rosemounde', and two passages about Arcite...

The Dukes of Este and the garden as scenery and representation of the magnificence of a dynasty

Ancient gardens survive in many sources, both literary and artistic. The importance of the garden since the Middle Ages is well known; the transition from the hortus conclusus of the Virgin Mary an...

Color of absence and presence: Reconsidering black in architecture

Abstract: This article explores the effects of using black on spatial experience by means of phenomenological analysis of its architectural examples with a special focus on Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designed by Peter Zumthor. Contrary to the growing interest in the color in contemporary architecture, black rarely found a place in architectural history and in studies on color design. Whereas, the distinct achromatic qualities of the color that appear highly self‐contradictory swinging back and forth from absence to presence cover a wide range of potentials to be used in architectural design. Through insights delved into the spatial experience constructed around these qualities, this paper attempts to analyze how black is used as a design element in built environments. This analysis revolves around Zumthor s pavilion, which stood as a uniform black box on the expanse of green grass of London Kensington Gardens for more than three months in 2011. Encompassing various oppositions, the box built to surround a hortus conclusus, an enclosed garden inside, provided its visitors with a unique spatial experience depending predominantly on the combination of its form, tectonics and the qualities of its color, black. The phenomenological analysis of these qualities manifests that the architect utilized the contradictory characteristics of the color intentionally in order to create a complex and manifold spatial experience for visitors in and outside the box. In an interplay of absence and presence, momentary crystallizations of the vision of black provide architects with uncharted opportunities for creative use of color in the design of built environments. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 42, 378–387, 2017

The Enacted Parable in The Mystery of Edwin Drood

The Enacted Parable in The Mystery of Edwin Drood Rodney Stenning Edgecombe (bio) In a comment on the fig-tree episode in Mark 11.13 ff., D. E. Nineham remarks that the only way to preserve some element of historicity in the story would be to suppose that the original cursing was an act of prophetic symbolism of the type known to us from the Old Testament (cf. e.g. 2 Chron. 1810, Jer. 272 and 2810ff.). The Gentile world, being unfamiliar with such prophetic acts, might then have interpreted it simply as a nature miracle designed to confirm Jesus’ supernatural power and status. (299) It can therefore be read either as a “thauma” (wonderwork) or as an enacted parable, which is “prophetic symbolism” by another name. Where the first is concerned, at least one “thauma” in the Old Testament – Joshua’s arrestation of the sun – centers on the manipulation of time, and that indeed is a primary concern in Jasper’s masque-like proposal to Rosebud in the Academy garden. But that same proposal also tries to embody impalpable aspects of his relationship with her by palpable gestures, and to that extent invites construction as the second, as an act of “prophetic symbolism.” Let’s begin with the “thaumatic” aspect of the scene. Germanus’ hymn μεγα και παραδοξον θαυμα (literatim, “Great and strange marvel”), which employs this noun, was translated by J. M. Neale and included in Hymns Ancient and Modern nine years before Dickens began The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Since it belongs to the Christmas section of that hymnal, Jasper and his choristers might well have sung it at the time of Drood’s disappearance – “A great and mighty wonder, / A full and holy cure!” (80) – or so one could infer from his allusion to it six months later: […] ‘I do not forget how many windows command a view of us,’ he says, glancing towards them. ‘I will not touch you again; I will come no [End Page 109] nearer to you than I am. Sit down, and there will be no mighty wonder in your music-master’s leaning idly against a pedestal and speaking with you, remembering all that has happened, and our shares in it. Sit down, my beloved.’ (219; ch. 19) Because the phrase is so inapposite – “mighty wonder” seems too grandiloquent, even as a litotes, to apply to a talk in an English country garden – it serves rather to alert us to the “mighty wonder” that is about to transpire, even though the thaumaturge does everything in his power to normalize its externals. This disconnection generates the nightmare quality of the episode, for the sound track (everything Jasper says would be inaudible to spectators at the Academy windows) and the imagery it subtends remain out of sync throughout. And there are other surreal disjunctions besides. Dickens might have known Donne’s “Lecture Upon the Shadow” – “Stand still, and I will read to thee / A lecture, love, in love’s philosophy” (1–2) – also a discourse on love in a sunny English garden – and, if so, introduced it here, but his primary point of departure is The Song of Solomon, with Rosebud standing in for the “rose of Sharon.” That Hebrew love poem would have furnished the “right” sound track for a colloquy of lovers in a nunnery garden, but here there is no equality of purpose and, instead, the one-sided harangue of a man deranged. The garden is presumably a hortus conclusus even though Dickens does not spell this out, and, like its counterpart in the poem, represents virginity: “A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed” (3.12). This makes Jasper’s violent speech all the more disconcerting. The circumstances require a gentle, persuasive wooing, but he opts instead for a full frontal assault. The twice-invoked windows of the school – “he folds his hands upon the sun-dial and leans his chin upon them, so that his talk would seem from the windows (faces occasionally come and go there) to be of the airiest and the playfullest” (222; ch. 19) – also evoke (and parody) the Song of Songs, for there the beloved “standeth...

Ołtarzyk koralowy z Niewiastą Apokaliptyczną w skarbcu kościoła Mariackiego w Krakowie. Treści teologiczne

In Polish museums’ collections there are a few objects made of coral or decorated with it. They are, among others, altars, holy water fonts, crucifixes and other liturgical items. Most often they were bought during Poles’ travels to Italy in the Mannerism and Baroque epochs. In St Mary’s Basilica’s treasury a portable coral altar is kept, dated to the middle of the 17 th century, a gift from Maria Jozefa, the wife of King August III. It has a golden frame and it is embellished with enamel and coral, and in its center it closes the figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary standing on a crescent, in a radiant coral glory, surrounded by Marian symbols. It is an apotheosis of the Blessed Virgin Mary based on a fragment of the Apocalypse of St John. The figure of Mary is presented with her cosmic attributes: twelve stars around her head; she is clothed with a radiant glory; and she has a crescent under her feet. Around her seven symbolic biblical signs are presented, ones connected in the exegetic tradition with her being the mother of the Messiah. The term Cedrus exaltata – is perceived as the symbol of majesty, sublimity, loftiness, paradisaical beauty, safety. Fons signatus is a sealed spring, a closed one, accessible only to the Mother of God’s Son, chosen by God. Hortus conclusus is the symbol of St Mary’s virginity. Oliva speciosa points to St Mary’s charity, her extraordinary fertility, inner peace, the gift of relieving sufferings. Rosa plantata is a metaphor of wisdom, love, medicine for sinners. Puteus aquarum viventium , a well of living waters, indicates St Mary’s mediation for people redeemed by Jesus. Turris eburnea – the ivory tower is another feature of the Virgin Mary’s beauty, the immaculacy of her body and of her fortitude.

Die ›Einhornjagd im hortus conclusus‹

Pictorial narrative relies heavily on the viewer interpreting the interrelation of pictorial elements. In how far is this process different from reading a diagram? And what are the clues that direct the recipient’s method of generating meaning? This essay discusses these questions by means of a paradigmatic analysis of a German linen embroidery from around 1500 displaying the ›Hunt of the Unicorn in the hortus conclusus‹. A ›close reading‹ of the embroidery shows how the narrative and the diagrammatic modes are interwoven and in what way the design of the embroidery uses these modes in comparison to similar objects. The essay argues that the narrative and the diagrammatic mode each evoke different kinds of spaces. However, it depends on the prior knowledge of the recipient whether he chooses the narrative or the diagrammatic mode as an approach to the artwork.