Garden Statue History

Anyone familiar with classic works such as Ovid's Metamorphoses will understand why mythological figures have played a large role in the history of garden statues. In Ovid, gods and goddesses are forever transformed or transforming, both masters and subjects of nature. Our gardens too are places of eternal metamorphoses, where replicas of gods stoically endure the changing seasons.

The Renaissance

The modern use of agarden statue can be traced to the Italian Renaissance 500 years ago. It was then and there that the great artistic and philosophical works of Greek and Roman antiquity were being discovered anew. Classical sculptures were also greatly admired, and many were excavated and transformed into garden statues. The Laocoon, for example, was a famous group of sculptures unearthed in 1506 that was displayed in the Belvedere Garden of the Vatican.

The English Garden

As the effects of the Renaissance moved north, the French and English acquired the craze for garden statues. Kings of both countries amassed large collections of garden sculptures both new and old.

The Italian influence was very direct in the case of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, who after returning from Italy in 1614 established the first major collection of garden statue antiquities at Arundel House in London. Arundel's garden statues can now be found at the Ashmolean museum in Oxford.

The Bourgeois Triumphant

Garden statues fell into disrepute during the British Civil War. Supporters of Oliver Cromwell considered them to be pagan images, and lead garden statues were melted down for musket shot.

But after King Charles II took power in England in 1660, garden statue replicas of classical images flourished. Gods and mythological creatures could be found in every garden and terrace. The popularity of such garden statues, particularly of Roman gladiators and creatures removed from their element, even prompted poet Alexander Pope to write some lines regarding the strange and banal transformation of nature:

Trees cut to statues, statues thick as Trees, With here a Fountain, never to be play'd; When Gladiators fight, or die, in flow'rs; Un water'd see the drooping Sea horse mourn.