Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

Title: Garden of Love with Chess Players
Creator: Master E.S., artist
Description: Three couples stand in a small garden. In the center a couple plays a game of chess, a game which carried erotic overtones of conquest. To the left, a woman weaves a crown of roses and exchanges a suggestive glance with a man who has positioned his sword suggestively between his legs. To the right a woman reads a letter as a fool, a symbol of lust, sidles up to her and places his hand on her buttocks. An owl, a symbol of lust, perches on the garden wall while hawks, symbols of sexual conquest, rest in the trees or swoop in from above. Keith Moxey has suggested that the audience for this print, and other works by Master ES, would have been an educated middle class that appreciated the artist's mocking of aristocratic activities.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Rights: Public Domain
Subject (See Also): Birds Chess Courtly Behavior Fool Gardens Love Sexuality
Geographic Area: Germany
Century: 15
Date: ca. 1450-1467
Related Work:
Current Location: Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, L214 (Lehrs II.302.214; Bartsch X.54.31)
Original Location:
Artistic Type (Category): Digital images; Prints
Artistic Type (Material/Technique): Copperplate engravings
Donor:
Height/Width/Length(cm): 16.5 cm (trimmed)/20.8 cm/
Inscription:
Related Resources: Keith Moxey, "Master E. S. and the Folly of Love," Simiolus 11.3/4 (1980): 125-48.