Guillaume de Machaut: Poetical Works

The most famous miniature in this manuscript is the "Mysterious Garden" on folio 103r, illustrating the poem Dit du Lion. Despite the stylised background decorated with golden arabesques, this cheerful nature scene is regarded as one of the oldest real landscape studies in the history of European art. The author describes a garden from which he is separated by a river. With some difficulty he succeeds in entering it. There he meets all kinds of animals, in particular a lion, a symbol of the faithful lover. The lion finally accompanies the poet to the lady for whom his heart yearns.

The delicate nature lyricism of this folio, with its carefully tiered tree tops, flowers, bushes, birds, deer, rabbits, foxes and bears, and the heron catching fish, forms an organic whole in which there is no place for human life. The only sign of humanity is the castle that can be seen beyond the trees and plays a crucial part in the story.

Nevertheless, the fundamentally decorative approach so popular in the later Middle Ages remains in evidence - for example, in the gold patterning of the background and the yellow and blue flowers scattered across the meadow.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 16 minutes): Carl Guillaume de Machaut: Chansons