The ‘Hortus Palatinus’ at Heidelberg and the reformation of the World. Part I: The iconography of the garden
Abstract Salomon de Gaus, architect and engineer, built a garden for the Palatine Elector, Frederick V, in Heidelberg; work on it stopped in 1620. In that year de Gaus published a book about the garden (figure I).1 It is an analysis of that publication as well as of its subject, the Hortus Palatinus, which forms the matter of this essay. Without the book, with its four pages of text and 30 plates, we would know practically nothing about the garden. The cessation of work on the garden, the writing of the treatise on the Hortus Palatinus and the departure of de Caus's patron for Bohemia all occurred in close proximity during the autumn of 1619. As de Caus himself points out, the garden was never completed because of the war in Bohemia, and in fact its destruction actually began as a result of the expansion of those hostilities into the Thirty Years War with the occupation of Heidelberg in 1622. Continual destruction occurred throughout the wars, as in many instances the new terraces had breached old fortifi...