ABSTRACT
The year 1605 was to end with the greatest of calamities for those who continued to harbor feelings for the old faith or for anything connected with "Rome", but it also began with a crisis of representation. Intuitively, in a far-sighted essay on Shakespeare and the Italian concept of 'art', Leo Salingar notes that around 1605 Shakespeare's sensuous, physical treatment of aesthetic images gives way to more theoretical formulations, attributing this change to Inigo Jones's return from Italy and the inception of his collaboration with Jonson. While some genres of painting withered under the gaze of official scrutiny and others sank into obscurity, one genre flourished at precisely the moment when Shakespeare's own career was achieving its apogee. The painting of garden scenes and flowers, even as decorative borders, existed in illuminated codices of Middle Eastern origin and in parts of Europe for centuries before they became established, full-scale genres of painting.
