Design for a parterre for a pleasure garden
Not on view
Engraving, with a garden design, part of an album with with 30 plates (mostly folded) of garden designs created by André Mollet and dedicated to Queen Kristina of Sweden. The album intends to provide inspiration for garden designers in France and Sweden in the creation of flower beds, groves, and other garden decorations.This design consists of a symmetrical design for a parterre with two grotesque masks flanked by two C-scrolls on the sides, with scrolling leaves and branches with stylized, exotic flowers emerging from their mouts, and separated by large, scrolling leaves with stylized exotic flowers that emerge from the upper part of their ears, and a round fountain in the center. The border of the parterre would have been made up of a stream of water or rows of boxwood or bushes. The design would have likely been created with boxwood embroideries, or by cutting grass into patterns and accentuated with hedges, flowers, and different kinds of ground cover, to achieve the 'compartiments de gazon', a type of grass designs popular in 17th-century France.
