Garden Sanctuary

This intense looking woman is the Victorian artist Marie Spartali Stillman. She was a British painter of Greek descent, and probably the greatest female artist of the Pre-Raphelite period. She produced hundreds of works during her sixty-year career.

Her painting below is called The Enchanted Garden of Messer Ansaldo. The story behind the painting (from The Decameron) tells about a lady who asks Messer Ansaldo for a garden that is as beautiful in January as May. To get the garden, he pledges himself to a wizard and then gives it to her. I like the way you can see a snowy winter scene outside the gate. It's a sanctuary, as all gardens should be.

Garden Sanctuary
You who walk,
Maybe with troubled thoughts,
Come, enter here and rest;
And may the sweet serenity of growing things
And the heavenly peace
Be mirrored in thy soul.
-Doxis M. Palmer