Matarea Garden
Watercolour
and oil pastel
©2020
Charlene Brown
At the second Sunday Art Lecture,
on March 8, Dr. Marcus Milwright described many aspects – artistic, medicinal
and religious – of this fabulous but elusive botanical wonder in Egypt.
According
to legend the garden sheltered the Holy Family after they fled to escape the
persecution of Herod, and early Christians considered the area sacred. Thus, in
medieval times, even though it belonged to the Islamic Sultan, only Christians
could harvest the valuable balsam oil.
The garden’s actual appearance is open to speculation as most of
the early illustrations of it were done by European artists and mapmakers who
had never actually been there. Most agree that there was a large sycamore, traditionally
the ‘Virgin’s Tree,’ and an obelisk nearby (although I think the one I included
is far too tall, making the garden look more like it’s in Washington DC than
Cairo) and there was some sort of water mechanism, and the precious balsom
shrubs (to which I’ve added orange trees) were surrounded by a wall with a
guarded gate. The detail on the right is
from an illustrated map, from the 1575 edition of Sebastian Munster`s
Cosmographia.
