the orbit of the academic tradition) which became the European default position for at least the next two hundred years. Perrault’s protagonist in his staged debate believes that art has progressed. The sixteenth‐century High Renaissance art of Raphael and Titian sets the standard. He acknowledges that ‘some years before’, a skilful art had existed. Because of his emphasis on observed detail, it is probable that he is referring to Northern Renaissance masters such as Van Eyck in the late fifteenth century. His clinching point is that the Chinese too have such an art. But whereas European art has progressed, Chinese art has not. It lacks the wider attributes of the academic canon, particularly shading (‘chiaroscuro’) and perspective, to give the illusion of three‐dimensions on a flat surface and a coherent unified composition building to a visual climax. At a stroke, the position is established that other arts are not merely different from but deficient with respect to post‐Renaissance Western art. The passage comes from the ‘Second Dialogue on the Three Visual Arts’ of Perrault’s Parallel of the Ancients and Moderns, published in 1688. It can be found in Art in Theory 1648–1815, IA7, p. 57. The text was translated for Art in Theory by Chris Miller.
Some years before Raphael and Titian, there were paintings made – they still survive – the principal beauty of which lies in the fineness of line; you can count every hair in the beard and on the head of each figure. Though Chinese art is very ancient, they have remained at this stage. They will, perhaps, soon learn to draw properly, to place their figures in noble attitudes, and attain exact expressions of all the passions. But it will be a long time before they attain a perfect understanding of chiaroscuro, the degradation of light, the secrets of perspective and the judicious organization of a large composition.
IC15 William Temple (1628–99) On the distinctiveness of Chinese gardens
Sir William Temple was an English diplomat of Irish descent who played an important role in the passing of the English throne to William of Orange after the Glorious Revolution. He subsequently retired from public life and lived quietly on his country estate enjoying his garden. Temple’s essay ‘Upon the Gardens of Epicurus, or of Gardening in the Year 1685’ is a thesis about the requirements for a human life well‐lived. Going beyond the passing needs of business and commerce, he sees fulfilment as something to be gained through contemplation and pleasure: pleasure of both the senses and the imagination, to be found in the experience of beautiful buildings, paintings, sculptures, tapestries and gardens. Temple traces the garden through antiquity, and indeed back to the Garden of Eden, but acknowledges that the idea of a garden as a kind of living symbol of Paradise originates in ancient Persia. He also offers suggestions for what makes a good garden in his own day, but adds that there can be exceptions to these rules, the principal one of which is to be found in China. The informality and apparent lack of order in a Chinese garden points to something different from what was then the norm in Europe. Interestingly, for Temple, this alternative aesthetic can also be found in other examples of Eastern material culture – he mentions Indian textiles, and Chinese painted decoration on both screens and porcelain. By his own admission, Temple had not seen Chinese gardens as such; he relied on the accounts of others, which goes some way towards explaining his invocation of ‘sharawadgi’ as a concept designating the paradoxical mixture of harmony and irregularity in Chinese gardens, as distinct from the geometry favoured in contemporary European garden design. The etymology of the term is uncertain; it may have Japanese rather than Chinese roots, and may have come to Temple via conversations with Dutch East India merchants during his time in the Netherlands. Be that as it may, the term entered the English language to refer to informality and irregularity in design. The present extracts are taken from the second essay in Temple’s Miscellanea: The Second Part. In Four Essays, 2nd edn, London, 1690, pp. 95–7, 119–20, 126–9, and 131–2.
If we believe the Scripture, we must allow that God Almighty esteemed the life of man in a Garden the happiest He could give him, or else He would not have placed Adam in that of Eden; that it was the state of innocence and pleasure; and that the life of husbandry and cities, came in after the Fall, with guilt and with labour.
Where Paradise was, has much been debated, and little agreed; but what sort of place is meant by it, may perhaps easier be conjectured. It seems to have been a Persian word, since Zenophon and other Greek authors mention it, as what was much in use and delight among the kings of those Eastern countries … So that a Paradise among them seems to have been a large space of ground, adorned and beautified with all sorts of trees, both of fruits and of forest, either found there before it was enclosed, or planted after; either cultivated like Gardens, for shades and for walks, with Fountains or streams, and all sorts of plants usual in the climate, and pleasant to the eye, the smell, or the taste; or else employed, like our Parks, for enclosure and harbour of all sorts of wild beasts, as well as for the pleasure of riding and walking […]
In every Garden four things are necessary to be provided for, flowers, fruit, shade, and water; and whoever lays out a Garden without all these, must not pretend it in any perfection: It ought to lie to the best parts of the House, or to those of the master’s commonest use, so as to be but like one of the rooms out of which you step into another. The part of your Garden next your House, (besides the walks that go round it) should be a parterre for flowers, or grass plots bordered with flowers; or if, according to the newest mode, it be cast all into grass spots and gravel walks, the dryness of these should be relieved with Fountains, and the plainness of those with Statues. […]
The best Figure of a Garden is either a square or an oblong, and either upon a flat or a descent; they all have their beauties, but the best I esteem an oblong upon a descent …
The perfectest Figure of a Garden I ever saw, either at home or abroad, was that of Moor Park in Hertfordshire when I knew it about thirty years ago. […] It lies on the side of a hill, (upon which the House stands) but not very steep. The length of the House, where the best rooms, and of the most use or pleasure are, lies upon the breadth of the garden, the great parlour opens into the middle of a terrace gravel walk that lies even with it, and which may be, as I remember, about three hundred paces long, and broad in proportion, the border set with standard laurels, and at large distances, which have the beauty of orange trees out of flower and fruit; from this walk are three descents by many stone steps in the middle and at each end, into a very large parterre. This is divided into quarters by gravel walks, and adorned with two Fountains and eight Statues in the several quarters; at the end of the terrace walk are two summer houses, and the sides of the parterre are ranged with two large cloisters open to the Garden, upon arches of stone, and ending with two other summer houses even with the cloisters, which are paved with stone, and designed for walks of shade, there being none other in the whole parterre. […]
What I have said of the best Forms of Gardens, is meant only of such as are in some sort of regular; for there may be other Forms wholly irregular, that may, for aught I know, have more beauty than any of the others; but they must owe it to some extraordinary dispositions of Nature in the seat, or some great race of Fancy or judgement in the contrivance, which may reduce many disagreeing parts into some Figure which shall yet upon the whole, be very agreeable. Something of this I have seen in some places, but heard more of it from others, who have lived among the Chineses; a people, whose way of thinking seems to lie as wide of ours in Europe, as their country does. Among us, the beauty of building and planting is placed chiefly, in some certain proportions, symmetries, or uniformities; our Walks and our trees ranged so, as to answer one another, and at exact distances. The Chineses scorn this way of planting, and say a boy that can tell [count to] an hundred, may plant Walks of trees in straight lines, and over against one another, and to what length and extent he pleases. But their greatest reach of Imagination, is employed in contriving Figures, where the Beauty shall be great, and strike the eye, but without any order or disposition of parts, that shall be commonly or easily observed. And though we have hardly any notion of this sort of Beauty, yet they have a particular word to express it; and where they find it hit their eye at first sight, they say the Sharawadgi is fine or is admirable, or any such expression of esteem. And whoever observes the work upon
