Design for a fountain surrounded by four square parterres 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 design for four square parterres around a circular fountain, separated by walking paths. The designs inside the parterres consist of two scrolls, flanked by larger scrolls and two cornucopias, enclosing three crown-like flower motifs. The cornucopias are flanked by scrolling branches with stylized, exotic flowers, and the scrolls to their sides meet on the center of the squares to form a sort of cartouche flanked above by a palmette and two scrolling motifs; the palmettes are crowned by stylized leaves. These parterres are likely meant to be framed by bushes with flowers, as indicated by the semi-abstract rosettes illustrated on the design. The motifs in the design were meant to be created, as stated by Mollet in the text, using boxwood embroideries.
