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Home , Antonio Tempesta, Cinyras, Cyparissus, Dryope, Lotis (mythology), Lotus tree

three  Trees and Ancient Stories

he stories in ’s are among the most influential and persistent in literary and art history. Publius Ovidius Naso was born in 43 bc in modern Solomona to the east of , and started Twriting Metamorphoses when he was in his forties. He had almost finished the work when he was associated with an unknown scandal which infuriated Augustus so much that Ovid moved to the distant edge of the Roman Empire on the Black Sea and never returned to Rome. Several of the transformations in the extraordinarily vivid, lengthy poem in fifteen books became popular and well-known subjects for painters from the fifteenth century onwards. Their intense analysis of grief, love, power, loss and jealousy allows constant reinterpretation. The classical scholar Denis Feeney tells the entertaining story of a Princeton undergraduate who, halfway through a course Feeney was teaching on Ovid, visited the Metropolitan Museum Art in New York and ‘returned after the weekend intoxicated by her rediscovery of the familiar collections: “It’s all Ovid!”’1 Several of Ovid’s stories concern the transformation of people into trees, while others tell of the creation of trees by gods. One of the best known, from Book 1, concerns who was loved by , the son of and god of music, literature and medicine. Although she had many aspirant suit- ors ‘Daphne fled from the very thought of a lover’ and instead enjoyed living 45 Attr. Master of the Judgement alone in the forests. She rejected all her admirers and ‘Stubbornly single, she’d of Paris, Daphne Pursued by Apollo, roam through the woodland thickets, without concern for the meaning of c. 1450, tempera on wood. marriage, or love, or physical union.’ Apollo falls desperately in love with her 46 Attr. Master of the Judgement and, chasing her through the woods, almost catches her. In order to escape of Paris, Metamorphosis of Daphne, from Apollo she pleads with her father, the river god Peneus, to change her c. 1450, tempera on wood.

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form and almost immediately ‘her soft white bosom was ringed in a layer of bark, her hair was turned into foliage, her arms into branches. The feet that had run so nimbly were sunk into sluggish roots; her head was confined in a treetop; and all that remained was her beauty.’ However, although she was now a tree ‘Apollo still loved her. Caressing the trunk with his hand he could feel the heart still fluttering under the new bark. Seizing the branches, as though they were limbs, in his arms’ embrace, he pressed his lips to the wood; but the wood still shrank from his kisses.’2 Apollo’s chase of Daphne is depicted in two mid-fifteenth-century wooden panels painted in , probably by two different artists work- ing in the same workshop (illus. 45, illus. 46). The panels are likely to have come from a highly decorated wooden chest or cassone, often designed as a wedding chest used to hold a bride’s dowry. The paintings follow the story closely; the first panel shows Apollo almost catching up with Daphne. In the distance there are bare mountains but the chase is set against trees that are closely spaced and in a row, with a gap in the middle of the painting which encourages us to focus on the figures. The sequence of trees helps to provide a sense of rhythm and movement to the chase. The lower branches of the trees have been cut off, carefully indicated by the branch stubs, and Daphne and Apollo run across short grass that has been closely grazed: this is an intensely managed landscape. The second scene shows the end of the chase, and the line of trees stops, allowing us to focus on Apollo’s failure and disap- pointment. Daphne’s arms are already transformed into branches and dense foliage that is of the same scale as the row of trees on the left. Paolo Veronese’s (1528–1588) Apollo and Daphne (illus. 47) was painted in Venice a century after the anonymous panels. Apollo and Daphne are framed by two large tree trunks and there are glimpses of a landscape of grazed wood pasture. The figures are so beautifully painted here that the transformation appears more ghastly. The faces of Apollo and Daphne express astonishment and pain and the transformation of Daphne’s limbs into ‘sluggish’ roots and branches is realistically distressing. Daphne’s left arm and fingers have become like a small pollarded tree, which is duplicated by the small low-cut pollard set to the left of Apollo. Once Apollo realises his first love has become a tree he tells her that ‘since you cannot be mine in wedlock you must at least be Apollo’s tree’ and intimately ‘twined in my hair’. The tree into which Daphne was transformed was Laurus nobilis, the bay tree or daphne, whose leaves were entwined into and presented at the Phythian Games held every four years at in honour of Apollo. Apollo tells Daphne: ‘your evergreen leaves are for glory and praise everlasting’ and poignantly, ‘With a wave of her new-formed branches the laurel agreed, and seemed to be nodding her head in the tree- top.’ Apollo adds that Roman generals will be wreathed by bay leaves ‘when

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47 Paolo Veronese, Apollo and Daphne, c. 1560–65, oil on canvas.

the jubilant triumphal of triumph is raised and the long procession ascends the Capitol’. Ovid flatters Emperor Augustus here by emphasizing that ‘On either side of Augustus’ gates your trees shall stand sentry, faith- fully guarding the crown of oak-leaves hanging between them.’ This refers to the two laurel trees that grew at the entrance to the emperor’s palace and the oak over the doorway which had been awarded to Augustus as saviour of Rome.3 The birth and death of appear on two wooden panels of a chest around 1510 attributed to the Venetian artist Sebastiano del Piombo (c. 1485– 1547; illus. 48 and illus. 49). Sebastiano moved to Rome in 1511, where he became friends with Michelangelo, but earlier works, like these, were strongly influenced by Giorgione. The tale of the birth and death of Adonis is told in Book 10 of Metamorphoses and concerns the lust of his mother for her father Cinyras and her subsequent punishment. Myrrha falls passionately in love with Cinyras and successfully plots with her nurse to have sex with him under cover of darkness. When her father realizes what has happened he is speechless with rage and she flees. When she is due to give birth she is living at Saba in southwest Arabia and is so full of horror at the incest she has committed that she pleads with the gods to change her form. Ovid tells

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how ‘Her bones became wood, and the marrow inside them survived as her blood was turned to sap. Her arms were converted to branches, her fingers to twigs, and her skin was hardened to form new bark.’ When ‘the developing tree had encompassed her pregnant belly’, Myrrha plunges her head into the bark, but ‘she still continues to weep and her warm tears drip from the new tree.’ Ovid moralizes that ‘Even trees can have honour’ and that her tears were transformed into resin, which ‘is given the name and fame of in lasting remembrance’. Myrrh is still usually harvested from Commiphora myrrha, which grows in southwest Arabia including Yemen.4 But what about the baby? The young Adonis continued to grow inside the myrrh tree, and had some difficulty ‘trying to find a way of leaving his mother and issuing forth. Inside its prison the pregnant belly swelled and stretched with its load.’ The tree began to resemble ‘a woman in labour; bent double it groaned again and again’. Eventually, assisted by , ‘Cracks appeared on the tree; the bark split open, and out came a living baby, a wailing boy, whom the at once laid down on the soft green grass and anointed with myrrh from his mother.’ The first of the two paintings shows the baby being helped from the myrrh tree by three women. Adonis ‘was soon a youth, then a man, and now more handsome than ever’ and so attractive that , goddess of love, became completely infatuated with him. She worried about him being injured when hunting and told him to avoid the ‘bristly boars’ with their ‘sharp-hooked tusks’, but his hounds ‘followed a well-marked trail and roused a boar from its lair’. Adonis ‘pierced its flank with his weapon. The creature at once dislodged the bloodstained point of the spear with the crook of its snout. As Adonis backed for safety in panic, the animal savagely charged and buried its tusks deep into his groin, so bringing him down on the gold sand, fatally wounded.’ Sebastiano del Piombo’s second painting shows the youthful Adonis being gored by a huge boar, not in this case a wild boar but a domesticated Tuscan pig (suino cinto toscano) with the char- acteristic broad white band around its body. Venus, in her grief, transforms his blood into the anemone, with its short-lived flowers. Behind the dying Adonis and the boar looms a large, unidentifiable tree, which immediately reminds us of the myrrh tree, his mother, in the first panel.5 One of the contributors to ’s small gallery or cabinet of curiosities (1570–75) designed for Francis i, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in the , Florence, was (1536–1603), who painted a fresco of the transformation of the Heliades to poplars (illus. 50). This story appears in Book 2 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The daughters of the Sun 48 Sebastiano del Piombo, Birth and Clymene, the Heliades, mourned the death of their brother . of Adonis, c. 1510, oil on panel. He had been killed by Jupiter striking him and his chariot with a lightning 49 Sebastiano del Piombo, Death bolt. They mourned, ‘weeping in useless tribute to death and beating their of Adonis, c. 1510, oil on panel. bosoms. Sprawled all over the grave, by night and day’ for several months.

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Ovid points out, ‘constant practice had turned it into a habit’. Eventually the eldest, ‘wishing to sink to the ground, complained that her feet had gone cold and rigid’; when a sister tried to assist, ‘her limbs were suddenly rooted fast to the place where she stood.’ Another found her hair turning to leaves, and they found that ‘bark began to enclose their loins, and gradually covered their bellies, their bosoms, their shoulders and arms, till all that appeared was their pleading mouths.’ Their mother tried to ‘strip the bark from their bodies and break the young branches off with her hands, but all that emerged was a trickle of human blood.’ ‘Stop hurting me, mother, please!’ whoever was bleeding entreated. ‘It’s me you’re tearing inside the tree!’ The tears flowed on and ‘dripped from the new-formed poplars’. Santi di Tito’s fresco shows more flesh than foliage; four of the sisters are just beginning to transform into trees, with sprouts shooting from their hands or heads. The black poplar (Populus nigra) is found in river valleys, frequently growing in gravel beds and on river banks throughout much of , including Italy and northern Greece. Small branches that fall from the trees readily take root in the loose gravel and grow into new trees as natural ‘cuttings’. The trees often have a broad curving form, which gives the impression that they are weeping over water.6 One of Santi di Tito’s pupils at Florence was Antonio Tempesta (1555– 1630). In addition to painting many frescoes, he made several series of biblical and classical etchings, including a large series for Ovid’s Metamorphoses which had wide circulation. One of these is from Book 10 and concerns Cyparissus, who was transformed into a cypress (illus. 51). Cyparissus lived on Ceos (modern Kea) and his story opens with the musical son of Apollo attracting trees to the bare hills by playing his . ‘Picture a hill and above the hill an expanse of plateau, green with a carpet of grass, but totally lack- ing in shade. Shade was provided when Orpheus . . . sat down’ and started to play. ‘Trees suddenly came on the scene,’ including oaks, poplars, limes, beech and hazel, ‘the ash that is made into spears, the knot-free fir and the ilex bending under the weight of its acorns; the genial plane, the maple of many colours, the willow that weeps by the river’. Ovid here gives precise example of the valuable characteristics of the different trees and their appear- ance. He adds that many trees had creepers, including ‘spirals of ivy’ and vines ‘supported on elms’.7 Young Cyparissus, who was ‘the best-looking boy on the island of Ceos’ and ‘the darling of Phoebus Apollo’, adored a tame stag ‘with spreading antlers that cast a shadow above its head’. This stag was adorned by with a jewelled collar and pendants of pearls. Cyparissus ‘would take the animal out to browse in new pastures’ and ride it ‘like the proudest horse-

50 Santi di Tito, Transformation of man’. The young Cyparissus was devastated when he killed his stag, as it the Heliades to Poplars, c. 1570, fresco rested hidden in the shade, by unthinkingly throwing a sharp spear. Apollo in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. tried to console his favourite but Cyparissus asked as a final gift from the

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gods ‘to mourn until the end of time’. ‘He wept and he wailed till his blood 51 Antonio Tempesta and Wilhelm drained out and the whole of his body started to turn the colour of green. Janson, ‘Cyparissus Changed into a Cypress Tree’, etching for The The hair that was hanging over his creamy forehead was changed to a shaggy Metamorphoses of Ovid (1606). profusion, which stiffened and rose to the starry sky in a slender point.’ Apollo ‘sighed deeply and sadly exclaimed: “You’ll be mourned by me, you 52 Antonio Tempesta and Wilhelm Janson, ‘Dryope Changed into a Lotus will mourn for others and always be there when they mourn for their loved Tree’, etching for The Metamorphoses ones.”’ The upright, evergreen cypress, since at least Roman times, has been a of Ovid (1606). favoured tree to grow in graveyards and cemeteries. Tempesta’s etching shows Apollo, with his lyre, trying to console the distraught Cyparissus; the stag, with its collar, is lying dead in the shade of a large deciduous tree. Cyparissus’ hair is starting to transform into cypress foliage.8 A second of Tempesta’s Ovid etchings (illus. 52) shows Dryope being turned into a from Book 9. Dryope had been raped by Apollo many years ago but was now married and had a young baby. She plucked some flow- ers from ‘the plant of a lotus’ which was actually the , ‘who had altered her features, while fleeing ’ disgusting attentions’. Dryope’s sister saw that this caused blood to flow down the stems and Dryope herself began to be transformed into a tree. When her father and husband arrived looking for Dryope, her sister ‘directed their eyes to the lotus tree. Its wood was still warm’ but ‘Already my dearest sister was nothing but a tree, except for her face.’ Dryope said, ‘look after me carefully; defend me from the slash- ing billhook and nibbling sheep.’ The identity of the ‘lotus tree’ is uncertain, but it is most likely Celtis australis, the nettle tree, which is a common tree in Italy and Greece. The leaves can be used for animal fodder and so Dryope’s request to be protected from ‘nibbling sheep’ and the ‘slashing billhook’ was very pertinent.9

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Wilhelm Tischbein (1751–1829), who lived in Rome for many years, is most famous today for his portrait of Goethe, with whom he travelled to Naples: Goethe in the Roman Campagna (1787). In the 1790s he worked with Sir William Hamilton on engravings of his collection of Greek vases intended as a pattern book for artists. He also worked on illustrations for and this etching became the frontispiece of the part containing the story of Polyphemus from Book 9 of the (illus. 53).The etching reflects the landscape of Polyphemus’ island, described by . The Cyclops were ‘an overweening and lawless folk, who, trusting in the immortal gods, plant nothing with their hands nor plough; but all these things spring up for them without sowing or ploughing, wheat, and barley, and vines, which bear the rich clusters of wine, and the rain of gives them increase’. But it also represented the rich and productive landscapes and vegetation that the artist and Goethe experienced near Naples. Here the vines grew vigorously up elm trees, a form of ‘coltura promiscua’ or promiscuous cultivation in which pruned, living trees such as elms, maples or poplars are used as supports over which growing vines climb and cling. Tischbein wrote in 1796:

I have just made a small picture of this, in which one can see on one small piece of land everything needed for man’s nourishment and sustenance: corn for bread, wine for drinking, flax for clothing, wood for building, meat for eating. It is a forest of grapes, where the garlands of vines stretch from one tree to another and are lost in the shadowy distance.

Tischbein felt that ‘hard-hearted’ Polyphemus, who lived in such a fruitful landscape, ‘would suffer no-one to share in any part of his superabundance’.10 Most tree stories present trees as static; in Ovid the transmogrified humans become rooted to the ground and trapped in a thick skin of bark, the only surviving movement being the branches blowing in the wind. And although they can be converted into weapons, or fall to the ground in a storm, trees are usually seen as benign. An exception is the tree that killed Milo of Croton, although in this case this is because Milo overestimated his strength. The story of Milo is told by the geographer Strabo: he was born in modern-day Crone in Calabria and became a celebrated general, athlete and wrestler. In around 510 bc he led an army that destroyed the Sybarites and he also was a wrestling champion in several Olympic and . His death was caused by his mistaken underestimation of the strength of a tree he came across when he strayed from the path in a deep forest. According to Strabo he ‘then, on finding a large log cleft with wedges, thrust his hands and feet at the same time into the cleft and strained to split the log com- pletely asunder; but he was only strong enough to make the wedges fall out,

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53 Wilhelm Tischbein, Oenotria tellus, whereupon the two parts of the log instantly snapped together’. The great c. 1790–1800, etching. strength of Milo was not enough for him to get free and he was caught in a trap; even worse, some wolves found him and he was devoured. The scene is painted by Jean-Jacques Bachelier (1724–1806; illus. 54), with a pair of snarling wolves and an anguished Milo.11 Storm-blasted trees, exemplified by Salvator Rosa’s jagged, broken trees and collapsed branches, are frequently found in Sublime paintings. The col- lapse of great trees can be symbolic of the necessity for change, insecurity, threat, revolution and the fall of kingdoms. Achille Etna Michallon (1796– 1822) painted The Oak and the Reed(illus. 55), based on Jean de La Fontaine’s retelling of Aesop’s fable comparing the fates of an ancient oak and a clump of reeds during a storm, in 1816. Some have seen this painting as referring to the fall of Napoleon after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. In La Fontaine’s

54 Jean-Jacques Bachelier (1724– 1806), The Tragic End of Milo of Croton, n.d. oil on canvas.

75 55 Achille Etna Michallon, The Oak and the Reed, 1816, oil on canvas. Trees and Ancient Stories

version the oak offers to protect the reed during a storm but the reed replies that its leaves are flexible and bend, but do not break in a storm; as the reed speaks, a great storm fells the tree. The painting depicts a man aghast at the great fallen oak and the collapsed canopy and branches, which have now fallen to a level with the reeds. Michallon carefully depicts the undamaged leaves of the reed and the lichen-encrusted bark of the tree trunk, which is twisted and smashed, exposing heart and sap wood. Low branches can pose a great danger to riders. Trees were often carefully managed along roads and paths: browsing animals usually consumed lower branches, and such branches were often cut away to provide wood for fuel, fencing or tools. But when out hunting or in battle it would be necessary to ride deep into unfrequented woodland where it was essential to avoid branches. Nicolaes Maes (1634–1693), a pupil of Rembrandt, in his lively ink drawing from around 1650–60 (illus. 56) shows part of the story of Absalom told in 2 Samuel 18. King David had asked his three commanders, including Joab, to deal gently with his third son Absalom, who had revolted against David. The battle took place in the wood of Ephraim ‘where the people of Israel were slain before the servants of David . . . And the wood devoured 56 Nicolaes Maes, Absalom, Fleeing on a Mule, is Caught by His Hair in an more people that day than the sword devoured.’ Absalom ‘rode upon a mule, Oak Tree, 1650–60, pen and ink and and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught brush drawing. hold of the oak, and he was taken up between the heaven and the earth; and

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the mule that was under him went away’. This was seen by a soldier who told 57 William Blake, ‘Dante and Joab, ‘I saw Absalom hanged in an oak.’ Absalom, caught by the tree with his Penetrating the Forest’, illustration to Dante’s , 1824–7, graphite, hair, had no chance and Joab ‘took three darts in his hand, and thrust them ink and watercolour. through the heart of Absalom, while he was yet alive in the heart of the oak’. Then ‘ten young men that bare Joab’s armour compassed about and smote Absalom, and slew him . . . and cast him into a great pit in the wood’. King David was distraught. Maes depicts the mule running away and Absalom, caught by his hair in the branches of two large trees, desperately swinging his legs in a vain attempt to escape his fate (2 Samuel 18). In 1824 the artist John Linnell commissioned from William Blake (1757–1827), the engraver and poet, a series of watercolour drawings to illus- trate Dante Alighieri’s (1265–1321) Divine Comedy. This commission was important financially to Blake as it gave him an income of around £2 a week, and he produced 102 watercolours before his death in 1827. In ‘Dante and Virgil Penetrating the Forest’ (Inferno ii; illus. 57) Virgil has persuaded Dante

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58 William Blake, ‘Homer and the to accompany him on his journey. They are shown, from the back, entering Poets’, illustration to Dante’s Inferno, a dark wood and Virgil appears to be encouraging the still-hesitant Dante to 1824–7, graphite, ink and watercolour. accompany him. The ancient, anthropomorphic trees seem to be bending down over the couple as they enter their dark shade. Their branches mimic Virgil’s raised arms, and the stylized, interlaced leaves form a network pat- tern. It is as if the poets are entering a trap. ‘Homer and the Poets’ (Inferno iv; illus. 58) depicts Virgil and Dante, who had passed through ‘a wood of thronging spirits’, standing high on a cliff edge and looking down through clouds into limbo, which is a park of huge deciduous trees. To the left are sev- eral poets with laurel wreaths on their heads. Dante has Virgil pointing out ‘Homer, sovereign poet. Next comes Horace the satirist, Ovid is third, the last is Lucan’; Homer is holding a sword. ‘The Wood of the Self-murderers’ (illus. 59) depicts Inferno xiii, where Virgil and Dante made their way ‘into a forest not marked by any path. No green leaves, but those of dusky hue – not a straight branch, but knotted and contorted.’ In this dark wood ‘the

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filthy nest’ and ‘Their wailing fills the eerie trees’. Virgil asks Dante 59 William Blake, ‘The Wood of the to break off a branch, and as in Ovid’s tale of Dryope, the tree cried out and Self-murderers’, illustration to Dante’s Inferno, 1824–7, graphite, ink and started to bleed: watercolour.

As from a green log, burning at one end, that blisters and hisses at the other with the rush of sap and air, so from the broken splinter oozed blood and words together, and I let drop that twig and stood like one afraid.

Virgil asks the bleeding tree to tell Dante his identity. He is the soul of Pietro delle Vigne, who had been imprisoned by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick ii at Pisa and committed suicide there in 1249. Blake shows the

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60 Gustave Doré, illustration for Dante’s Inferno, Canto 13 (1861).

bleeding tree and the shapes of other human forms in other trees. Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was influenced by the drawings of Blake and the paintings of John Martin in his illustrations for the Divine Comedy, which he started work on in 1855; it was published in 1861. In his terrifying image men are rushing out towards the viewer, being chased by wolves and trapped and transmogrified into desperate pollarded trees. One of the reasons for starting the series may have been his shock at the suicide of his friend the poet Gérard de Nerval, who hanged himself from a Paris lamp post in 1855. Doré worked on the project for three years and paid for the woodblocks, engravers and printing himself. Once published it was an enormous success (illus. 60).12 The carving and marking of trees with names and slogans is an ancient form of commemoration and communication. In Ovid’s Heroides v the nymph deserted by Paris remembers how he used to carve her name on beech and poplar trees:

The beech trees guard my name, cut there by you, and I read ‘Oenone’, written there by your knife: And as the trunk grows, my name grows the same: grow, and rise straight, in honour of my name! I remember, a poplar, rooted by a flowing stream, on which letters are carved, testaments to us.

In Shakespeare’s As You Like It Orlando falls in love with the Duke’s daughter Rosalind and carves her name on trees:

81 61 Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, fresco of Angelica Carving Medoro’s Name onto a Tree, 1757, in the Villa Valmarana, Vicenza. Trees and Ancient Stories

O Rosalind, these trees shall be my books, And in their barks my thoughts I’ll character.

Ludovico Ariosto’s (1474–1533) poem Orlando Furioso (1516) is perhaps best known today as the source for libretti used in operas by Vivaldi and Handel. The fantasy poem, which involves hippogriffs and flights to the moon, includes a series of love stories. The beautiful Angelica, princess of Cathay, is loved by the hero Orlando, but while travelling in a forest near Paris she comes across the handsome Arabian knight Medoro unconscious on the ground with blood streaming from a wound. She tends his wounds and they become besotted with each other and marry. On their lengthy honeymoon they wander between parkland trees and ‘Among so many pleas­ ures, whenever a straight tree was seen shading a fountain or clear stream, she had a pin or knife ready at once . . . angelica and medora was written, bound together with various knots . . .’ This scene was a popular subject for artists and this fresco by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (illus. 61) shows Medoro gazing adoringly at Angelica as she cuts into the bark. The fresco is one of a series depicting scenes from two classical poems, the and the , and two modern ones, Gerusalemme liberata and Orlando furioso, painted for Count Giustino Valmarana at his Villa Valmarana ai Nani just outside Vicenza in 1757. In Ariosto’s poem, when the lovers’ graffiti are later discov- ered by Orlando he falls into a terrible rage and destroys the trees: ‘each bole, or stem or stock he hacked, whereon those names still met his view. From that day forth no shepherd with his flock their grateful shade or pleasant coolness knew.’13

62 Maria, Lady Callcott, Tasso’s Oak, 1800–1842, lithograph.

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Names carved on trees can act as human memorials, but trees them- selves can also become memorials by association. The Italian poet Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) is most famous for Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1581), which was widely translated and enormously popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After a chequered career, for several years he was confined in an asylum. Pope Clement viii invited him to Rome in 1594 and he was to be crowned poet laureate, with laurel leaves, on the Capitol. But he fell ill and retreated to the Convent of Sant’Onofrio, where he died. According to tradition he spent his last days under the shade of an oak tree taking in the view of Rome and St Peter’s below the Janiculum Hill. Goethe visited the tree in 1787 and it became a popular tourist attraction. A view from Tasso’s Oak was drawn by J.M.W. Turner in 1819. This lithograph of Tasso’s oak (illus. 62) is by Maria Graham (1785–1842), the author and

63 James Stephanoff, Falstaff at Herne’s Oak, from ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’, Act v, Scene v, 1832, oil on panel.

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