![]() ![]() Proserpina’s cyclical descent to Hades and rise to Earth was believed to bring about the changing of seasons, and the pomegranate was thus seen as a symbol of resurrection and immortality. Proserpina’s mother, Ceres, secured her release from Hades, but, before leaving Proserpina, ate the seeds from a pomegranate and, because she had consumed food in the Underworld, was compelled to spend part of every year there. Ovid tells in the Metamorphoses of Proserpina’s abduction by Pluto, ruler of the Underworld. The pomegranate is perhaps best known, however, for its fateful role in the myth of Proserpina. ![]() There are several legends of the pomegranate’s creation, contributing to its symbolic potency according to one, it grew out of blood streaming from the wounded genitals of the lustful Acdestis. The pomegranate, for example, is depicted in mythological paintings as an attribute of Venus and a symbol of desire, fertility-because of its many seeds-and marriage, but appears as frequently in sacred images of the Virgin and Child. Early religious writings such as the Bible and the Apocrypha, and Christian texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance are also rich in this imagery, often borrowing from pagan symbolism and occasionally supplanting it. ![]() Fruits, nuts, herbs, and grain are discussed in treatises on farming and natural history, and appear widely in mythology as attributes of gods and goddesses-grapes for Bacchus, god of wine a sheaf of corn or wheat for Ceres, the grain goddess-and in metaphors for virtue and vice. The symbolism of food and drink has roots in classical literature. They also often carried a symbolic meaning or an allusion to the painting’s subject. These items allowed the artist to display virtuosic skills of observation and description of color, shape, and texture. In the fifteenth century, artists took increasing inspiration from the culture of antiquity and from the natural world, and began to depict objects such as fruits, sweets, and wine vessels, as well as flora and fauna, in both devotional and secular images. The practice of depicting food and feasting stretches back through the Middle Ages to ancient Greece and Rome, where banquets and bacchanals were consuming passions celebrated in literature, painting, and mosaics (as in the trompe l’oeil “unswept floor” mosaic from the emperor Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, littered with fish bones, fruit pits, nutshells, and other dining table scraps). From an apple held by the infant Jesus to a fowl indelicately handled by a lusty kitchen maid, food and drink appear in myriad contexts over four centuries of European painting. ![]()
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