A quick note on obelisks, as I see the one in the background of the painting is described as an ‘unlikely architectural feature’.
I don’t think this is quite right. Obelisks were, in fact, rather common in northern architecture of the period, featuring regularly in formal gardens. For example, Robert Dudley’s garden at Kenilworth(visited by Elizabeth I in 1575) was divided into four quarters, each of which had an obelisk in the centre, “rising pyramidically fifteen feet high” with an orb “of porphyry” on the top. So, we shouldn’t be surprised that the garden in the background of the Linder gallery contains such a feature. It may have been modeled on one of Hans Vredeman de Vries’s popular and widely circulated designs, an example of which is shown below. We can also see, in this painting by Vredeman de Vries, a configuration of balcony, staircase, and obelisk more or less identical to the configuration of the Linder gallery
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Alex says:
Why imaginary? I think the straightforward answer is that the artist is simply following the conventions of the genre to which the Linder gallery belongs. That isn’t to say there /can’t/ be any astronomical significance to the obelisk, but I think there’s a real danger with this type of image to read too much into every detail. We need to be alert to the possibility that some parts of the picture are just conventional…
michaeljohn says:
Great! So after all it looks like we are agreed then that this is imaginary architecture rather than a depiction of a real architectural feature. And if imaginary, we have to ask why? And to me the why may well be connected as much to the astronomical significance of obelisks in the 1620s as to the architectural fantasies of Vredeman de Vries.