Fruity frescoes
Over the back door of the Cambridge Botany
School are some carvings
of partly wilted Ginkgo biloba shoots. The story goes that ‘model’
shoots had been brought from the Botanic Gardens but that it was several hours
before the stone masons started work. The masons carved what they saw, namely
shoots that had been out of water for some time. We might say, copying Oliver
Cromwell, that the carvings showed their subject ‘warts and all’. The same may
be said of the depictions of plants in the wonderful frescoes in the Villa
Farnesina at Rome,
painted by Giovanni Martini da Udine between 1515 and 1518, as discussed by Janick
and Paris (Purdue University, USA and Newe Ya’ar Research Center, Israel, pp.
165–176). The paintings are amazingly accurate representations of crops
from the villa’s gardens, and if a particular fruit was diseased or blemished,
this is clearly illustrated. Janick and Paris have focussed on the fruits of
plants in the family Cucurbitaceae, which are so well painted that it is possible
to identify the species and to appreciate the genetic variation within them.
They show that a number of African and Asian cucurbits, including Citrullus
lanatus (water melon), three varieties of Cucumis melo (melon) and Cucumis
sativus (cucumber) were grown in Italy in the early 16th century;
several of these had been introduced into Europe
centuries earlier. There are also clear depictions of some New
World species, including the South American Cucurbita maxima
(pumpkin). The presence of such species is an indication that even so soon
after the first voyage of Columbus,
European horticulture was already starting to make use of seeds brought back by
the explorers. Another interesting specimen is the wild southern-European
species Echballium elaterium (squirting cucumber). This was grown for
its medicinal properties but perhaps the gardeners also appreciated its
beautiful seed dispersal mechanism!
Professor J. A. Bryant
University of Exeter, UK
j.a.bryant{at}exeter.ac.uk
