Gardener with a Basket on her Arm, from Hortulanae series

Art Historical Context

**Gardener with a Basket her Arm**, from the *Hortanae* series, is a delicate etching and engraving created between 1612 and 1616, attributed to Jacques Bellange Jean I Leblond. This print captures a poised female gardener carrying a basket on her arm, exemplifying the series' focus on women in horticultural roles—a nod to the era's appreciation for nature's nurturers amid Europe's early 17th-century artistic shift toward intricate detail and humanism. The medium of etching and engraving allowed for exquisite line work and tonal depth, making prints like this accessible reproductions of fine art. Measuring about 11½ by 6½ inches in its image area, it showcases the technical prowess of the Lorraine School, where Bellange excelled, blending fluid lines with precise shading to evoke texture in fabrics, baskets, and foliage. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department, this piece highlights women's everyday labor in a time when gardening symbolized harmony with the natural world. Its survival through the Harris Brisbane Dick Fund underscores its enduring appeal, inviting visitors to ponder the quiet dignity of these "hortulanae," or garden women, in Baroque-era imagery.

About the Artist

Jacques Bellange|Jean I Leblond · 1570–1616

Jacques Bellange (c. 1575–1616) was a French artist and printmaker active in the independent Duchy of Lorraine, now part of France. Believed to have been born in the Bassigny region south of Nancy, his early life and training remain sparsely documented, with no records of specific teachers or mentors. He first appears in historical records in 1595 at La Mothe, where he took on an apprentice, sugge...