‘Cyprus Lawn’: Robert Herrick, Collectors, and the Mediterranean Trade in Art

This essay examines the competition among English collectors to acquire works of art originating in the Mediterranean. Although its principal focus is on the 1620s, many of the objects desired by collectors remind us forcibly of the cultural meanings of Cyprus for the early modern period as a whole, including as they do pictures of Venus, supposedly born on the island, Cyprus lawn, and images of the flaying of Marsyas, which could recall the flaying of Bragadino. In showing how Herrick’s verse responds to such objects, this essay helps us see how subtly the products, history and atmosphere of an island like Cyprus could influence the literature of another island hundreds of miles from it.