Tuin met een parterre met diagonale paden 1583

This engraving of a garden parterre with diagonal paths was made by an anonymous artist, and is currently held in the Rijksmuseum. The very concept of such highly ornamented gardens speaks to the social and economic conditions in which they were made. Elaborate gardens such as this require considerable resources: land, labor, and capital, all of which reflect the hierarchical social structures of the early modern period. The Dutch Republic was one of the most economically advanced societies of its time, and the culture surrounding gardening became one of intense competition to express status. Books and prints such as this one fueled the aspirations of merchants and patricians to outdo each other with ever more complex designs. The historian of art uses documentary sources such as estate inventories, building contracts, and publications like this one, to reconstruct the world in which these gardens existed and the social meanings they conveyed.