LILLE TAPESTRY FACTORY
The formal garden
early eighteenth centuryRCIN 110203
This image of a formal garden provides a plethora of garden elements; balustrades and parterres, lined with an obelisk, statuary, a renaissance-style loggia and trelliswork arbours. The inclusion of the figure of Hercules slaying the winged dragon at the centre of the fountain might be a reference to the mythical garden of the Hesperides. In the myth Hercules was obliged to slay a dragon to gain access to a garden where golden apples grew.