Triomfboog in latwerk met drie doorgangen 1702

This print of a garden triumphal arch was made by Daniël Marot, a French designer working in the Netherlands in the late 17th or early 18th century. The image presents the viewer with the kind of structure that would typically be built as a temporary construction to celebrate the arrival of a monarch or the victory of an army. But this is in a garden. Marot worked for the Stadtholder William of Orange, later King William III of England. William's court was deeply concerned with status and ceremony and these garden structures show us how that concern filtered down into even the most informal of spaces. We see the architecture of power here, but it's an architecture of leisure rather than government. This art is both embedded in and reflective of the social structures of its time. To understand the full implications of this image, historians might look at garden design manuals and other prints to build up a picture of the cultural values in the Dutch Republic at this time.