Hendrick De Clerck - The Garden of Eden with the Four Elements - The Phoebus Foundation

The Phoebus Foundation

Hendrick De Clerck – The Garden of Eden with the Four Elements

In this episode of ‘Phoebus Focus’, you will discover everything about the garden of Eden, political propaganda, Archdukes Albrecht and Isabella, and the gardens of the Coudenberg Palace. But what do they all have to do with each other? Dr Katharina Van Cauteren, chief of staff of The Phoebus Foundation, and Koen Fillet take you to the imaginative 17th-century depiction of paradise by Hendrick De Clerck and Denijs Van Alsloot. The painting reveals an abundance of religious, artistic, and political information.

Allegorical depiction of the earthly paradise with the four elements: nude figures in a lush landscape filled with animals, birds, fruits, and flowers; personifications of water and earth in the foreground, with floating figures and putti in the sky above. Painting by Hendrick de Clerck and Denijs van Alsloot, 1613.
Hendrick De Clerck and Denijs Van Alsloot, The Garden of Eden with the Four Elements, 1613

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