Georges-François Blondel (1730-1791?) was a draughtsman, an architect and an engraver (graveur à l’eau-forte et en manière noire – mezzotinter). Born in Rouen, Blondel was admitted in the Académie d’Architecture in 1728. He was the son of Jacques-François Blondel (January 8, 1705 – January 9, 1774), also a French architect. He was trained in Paris, in Rome between 1756 and1760, in Amsterdam in 1763, and in London from 1765-74. He disappeared during the French Revolution.

He may have been related to Médéric Blondel, the architect who had arrived in Malta in 1657 in the service of the Order of St John and who had worked with Francesco Buonamici. From 1670, Médéric Blondel had carried out the projects of Antonio Maurizio Valperga in the fortifications of Floriana, the line of fortifications of Cottonera and Fort Ricasoli.

Georges-François Blondel published an oblong album in folio showing a series of different styles of trellises found in various gardens around the world, including Versailles, Madrid, St Petersburg, Vienna, London and Malta. It is titled Nouveau Livre de treillages pour la décoration des jardins inventés par M[onsieur] Blondel le fils, consisting of 17 unnumbered pages, all illustrations of different trelliswork, and a plan of a labyrinth. It is undated, but it is probably c.1780.

The first print also acts as the title page for the album. At the bottom centre, outside the neat line of this first illustration, there is the imprint: A Paris chez N. J. B. de Poilly [1707-1780]. Poilly started his editorial activities in Paris from 1734 at Rue St Jacques à l’Esperance.

Not all the prints are signed, but plates 15 and 16, both titled Desseins du treillages, are signed Blondel inv. The final Plate 17 is signed Le Nautre inv. and Plate 12, Treillage executé à̀̀ Malte, sports the imprint: A Paris chez Daumont. Jean François Daumont (active c.1740–1775) was a French publisher and printer of vues d’optique, wallpaper, popular prints, and playing cards.

The following is the list of plates in the album:

1. Nouveau Livre de treillages pour la décoration des jardins inventés par M.r Blondel le fils.

2. Treillage executé à̀̀ Bellevué.

3. Treillage executé à̀̀ Versailles.

4. Treillage executé à̀̀ Meudon.

5. Treillage executé à̀̀ Marly.

6. Treillage executé à̀̀ Madrid.

7. Treillage executé à̀̀ Petersbourg.

8. Treillage et baldaquin executé à̀̀ Berlin.

9. Treillage et baldaquin executé à̀̀ Dresde.

10. Treillage executé a Vienne.

11. Treillage et baldaquin executé à̀̀ Londres.

12. Treillage executé a Malte. Imprint: A Paris chez Daumont. (Fig. 1)

13. Vue des berceaux du jardin de S.E. le général comte d’Althann en Allemagne.

14. Vue de la colonade du jardin de S.E. le général comte d’Althann en Allemagne

15. Desseins de treillages signed: Blondel inv [enit].

16. Desseins de treillages signed: Blondel inv [enit].

17. Plan du labirinthe [sic] de Versailles signed: Le Nautre in.[venit].

Re Plate 13, Count Gundacker von Althan (1665-1747), imperial general, court war councillor, diplomat and court director, had built a palace with a splendid garden on a plot he had bought in 1729. In 1745, Count Gundacker von Althan sold the place to his stepson Ferdinand Philipp Fürst Lobkowitz, who also resold it. After several changes of ownership, the palace became the property of Michael von Barich in 1839. Barich controversially demolished the palace and divided the property into 34 plots on which residential buildings were built between 1842 and 1845. Today’s Barichgasse outside Vienna, was named after him.

The album is very scarce and there is not even a copy of it at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Loose plates from the album rarely come up on the market.

It is possible, though this may be only conjecture, that the trelliswork executed in Malta may have been copied or inspired from one of the fountains which had adorned Ġnien is-Sultan.

Ġnien is-Sultan was built by Grand Master Lascaris (1636-1657) in 1642 after he had requisitioned a site near Porta del Monte to build a summer residence with a baroque garden designed by the architect Francesco Buonamici. The baroque garden, which was then called Il Giardino della Marina, included a number of fruit trees, a triumphal arch and two elaborate fountains. Below the garden and the Belvedere there would also have been Neptune’s fountain, the church of Our Lady of Liesse and the Del Monte Gate.

The whole sight must have been stunning to look at when entering the Grand Harbour by boat and would surely have been the talk of the town for many foreign visitors after seeing such a magnificent waterside. The scene has been depicted in several watercolours, engravings and paintings from the 18th to the 19th century. Even as late as 1840, Augustin François Lemaître (1797-1870) in Lacroix’s L’Univers pittoresque, immortalised it in a steel engraving titled Cité Valette.

The whole sight must have been stunning to look at when entering the Grand Harbour by boat

One of the articles written for the book Humillima Civitas Vallettae, published to coincide with the Valletta European Capital of Culture 2018, was that penned by Theresa Vella and Stephen C. Spiteri, who wrote an article about Ġnien is-Sultan. In the article, they lament that there are no remains of the sculptures that embellished the fountains of the garden, and that apart from a trace offset of an image that is now missing from the Beaufoy Album of Charles Frederick de Brocktorff at the National Library, they have no idea what the fountains looked like.

From the engraving being shown here, one can easily evince that this double-sided fountain was a three-sided architectural structure. It might have been the central large fountain coming into the garden from Porte del Monte as is shown in the manuscript garden layout found in the National Library collection.

The ensemble had at the centre, a squarish fountain with a small cascade of water flanked by two nymphs and two statant stone lions spouting water into the basin. Two other lions look the other way, keeping guard.

At the back, there is another fountain with a scallop shell basin and a swan spouting water at the centre. At the sides inside an alcove niche are two mythological statues. The statue on the left seems to be the nymph Calypso detaining Odysseus. The dog at her feet brings to mind the painting of Odysseus and Calypso by Jan Brueghel the Elder where Odysseus is fondling Calypso’s breast, with a typical Maltese dog at her feet. The statue on the right could be the goddess Athena who is associated with wisdom and the arts.

The fountain is covered with trelliswork, or treillage, and is adorned with the eight-pointed cross of the Order and two medallions of heads in profile linked with swags. The top of the structure has a lidded cup with a festoon draped over it at the centre, flanked by two trophies of hunting equipment.

This type of ornamental trelliswork was never meant to have any trailing greenery on it, but was added as an ornament to the architectural structure. The shrubs and espaliered trees are found on the trelliswork at the sides which go beyond the architectural structure.

The other fountain that has survived and which is found at the end of the garden has a similar three-sided architectural structure and basically shows the same elements found in the other fountain, except there would have been different statues and other ornamental features.

Since trelliswork formed part of the decor of noble and bourgeois gardens, it is more than likely that it was also ornamented with trelliswork too and that the rusticated stone which we see today came later,  during the British period.

Ġnien is-Sultan was a French-style garden based on symmetry as was the vogue during Lascaris’s reign and later. Influenced by the gardens of Versailles, gardens of that period were symbols of monarchic power, and were meant to impress.

They were also meant to be seen and enjoyed from above, and the belvedere served the dual pleasure of feasting the eyes on the greenery below and on the beautiful vista of the harbour with its lovely emerald sea.

Only the bewitching charm of this relatively small garden would have induced Blondel to include it with the sprawling baroque giants such as those of Versailles, Meudon, St Petersburg, Dresden, Vienna and London that we find in the album.