The Garden of Love, Right Half

Christoffel Jegher produced several large-scale woodcuts in collaboration with the Flemish painter and diplomat Peter Paul Rubens, of which this two-sheet print is the largest. The panoramic garden setting includes delights such as a group of musical enthusiasts perched on plush chairs and colonnaded ledges on the left; on the right is a fountain grotto with decorative streams of water into which the most boisterous men try to cajole their lovers. The unsure woman on the far right, her waist firmly grasped by a smooth-talking admirer, resists the necessary push into temptation from a determined, winged Eros. Rubens was deeply involved in producing prints after his paintings, of which the most illustrious were woodcuts created from about 1632 to 1636 by Christoffel Jegher. The most ambitious of these large woodcuts is the Garden of Love, a composition inspired by the painting of this subject (now at Waddeson Manor, Buckinghamshire), dated around 1630/31. Rather than an exact reproduction of the painting, the composition was redrawn with variations by Rubens on a separate sheet as a model for the woodcut artist to follow; it was then printed by Jeghers on two nearly equal-sized sheets that function as self-contained works. Belonging to the tradition of Medieval love gardens, the right half contains portraits of Rubens and his radiant young wife, Helena Fourment, who is echoed in almost all the female faces.