Drottningholm Palace Gardens — Swidde

A magnificent late 17th-century copperplate engraving offering an aerial view of the Baroque waterworks and parterres of Drottningholm Palace.

Original Latin title: Effigies Euripi salientium labentiumque aquarum Horti DROTTNINGHOLMENSIS. Engraved by Willem Swidde. From Suecia Antiqua et Hodierna. Published in Stockholm, 1694.

Drottningholm's gardens, designed by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, were the most ambitious essay in French formalism north of Versailles, with cascades, statuary axes and the famous Hercules Fountain looted from Frederiksborg in 1659. Swidde's plate is the principal contemporary record of their original Baroque programme.

Copperplate engraving. Sheet size approximately 40.0 × 55.0 cm. Very Good.