My garden

It's embarrassing to be more or less an expert on period gardening and herbs and stuff and have a yard that is not very up-to-snuff. But it's true. My job and the junketing around the kingdom I've done doesn't leave much time for playing in the dirt, no matter how much I love it. And when you add the fact that my garden was, before I got there, a haven for all the old fashioned flowers that are old fashioned because they will take over the world if not dealt with firmly, it's an excitement.
( Cut for those of you who find garden blather boring )

Bathing Beauties

(Warning: I am quietly borrowing large swathes of our humanities library before it is temporarily closed. Randomness is likely to ensue.)

The most common images of fountains and/or bathing come from depictions of the story of David and Bathsheba. The text Treasures from Italy's Great Libraries (NY: Vendome Press, 1997) includes one such, from a Book of Hours, located in the Biblioteca Centrale of Palermo (Dep. Museo 6, Fol.63) It is attributed to the period between 1469 and 1519.

What is outstanding about this is the detail. Bathsheba has obviously stripped down to her translucent chemise (fairly straight, with slightly belled, full length sleeves): her clothes and belongings, including shoes and wha appears to be a richly embroidered dress or mantle as well as a bundle of some sort, are strewn around and on top of a wattle-walled seat around a tree (the tree has been trimmed and apparently latticed into three levels). She still wears a headrail of some sort, but her hair is hanging down. She has on some sort of bathing shoes or possibly pattens, which look remarkably like Dr. Scholl's but seem to have the strap farther up on the instep. She is either removing or putting on her chemise, as it is close to waist height; I would assume she is supposed to be removing it, but she might just be raising it to step into the fountain.

The fountain is a round one, with a raised, straight rim that appears to be about knee-high, and a high central or side pillar that spills water from a pipe coming out what may be a dog or lion mouth. An outlet in the foreground sends the water off in a stream.

In the framing, there are acanthus leaves, clove pink flowers, what I think may be a calendula, a hearts-ease flower, and a flower I don't recognize.