ArtGenetics

A fellow scientist, Martin Mecchia, saw this painting 🖼️ in the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid 🇪🇸.

🌱➡️🌾 Look closely at the right-hand side of the landscape 👀 and you’ll find the Miracle of the Wheat Field: wheat sown as the Holy Family passed is said to have grown and ripened instantly, confusing Herod’s pursuers.

The miracle compresses a growing season into a moment.

The work is Joachim Patinir’s Rest during the Flight into Egypt, generally dated around 1518–1520.

🎨 Joachim Patinir was a pioneering Flemish landscape painter.

Patinir’s wheat is remarkably tall 🌾, at least compared to our current wheat.

🧬 Genetics tells a story in which humans have altered wheat gradually over thousands of years. Modern semi-dwarf varieties only became widespread in the twentieth century, when changes involving Rht growth genes helped produce shorter plants capable of supporting high grain yields.

Crafted in Greece in the late 6th century BC, this striking pomegranate 🍎 — now on display at the 🏛️ — carried deep symbolic meaning in the ancient world.

With its countless seeds, the pomegranate symbolized fertility 🌱, abundance ✨, prosperity 💫, and the richness of life in ancient Greece 🇬🇷. It was also closely tied to the myth of Persephone, goddess of spring, whose fate became forever linked to Hades, god of the underworld, after eating the sacred fruit.

A small sculpture filled with powerful mythology ⚡ and symbolism across centuries ⏳.

🎨🍍 Around 1848, Wilhelm von Kaulbach painted “German Artists Make Their Sketches in Rome” 🇮🇹🖌️

When .vergauwen saw this masterpiece in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich , his attention was immediately drawn to the beautiful Cayenne pineapples 🍍beneath the lute player 🎶👀

📚 The very first known literary reference to the Cayenne variety appears in the Gardeners’ Chronicle (England) 🇬🇧 on March 6, 1841, under the column heading “Foreign Correspondence”. 📰🌱

🖼️ A garland of fruit around the sculpted bust of a girl from the 2nd half of the 17th century.
❓Can you help us? What is depicted below the numbers 1 and 2? Add your ideas below.

🍅Tomato soup is a soup with tomatoes - which originated in what is known today as central Mexico down to Brazil - as the primary ingredient. It can be served hot or cold. 
📜The first published recipe for tomato soup appeared in N. K. M. Lee’s The Cook’s Own Book in 1832. 
🥫The Campbell Soup Company later helped popularize the dish with the introduction of condensed tomato soup in 1897.
🖼️Campbell’s Soup Cans is a series of 32 paintings produced by American artist Andy Warhol between 1961 and 1962. 

💞 On February 14th, Valentine’s Day, couples around the world celebrate their love for each other through words, gifts and actions 💖💐. In this still life painting by Abraham Mignon a few, perhaps sensual, meanings can be found. Love might be hiding in the foods displayed on the table 👀. In the center of the still life, we see oysters that have been opened, their saps spilling on the table. Oysters are a well known aphrodisiac. Another fruit referencing love may be the pomegranate, an ancient symbol of fertility. 🪷

Pomegranate was originally grown on the Persian plateau some 5.000 years ago. Since then it has been cultivated all over the world. Pomegranates are still widely consumed for its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and cardiovascular benefits, supporting health and longevity. ❣️

How are you celebrating Valentine’s Day today? 🥰

🖼 Still Life with a Goblet of W**e, Fruit and Oysters, Abraham Mignon, ca. 1670 in

🥬 Last year, this 19th century jadeite cabbage was part of the “100 Treasures, 100 Stories” exposition in the in Prague (on loan from the in Tapei).

🥬 It is a piece of jadeite carved into the shape of a napa cabbage head, and with a grasshopper and a locust camouflaged in the leaves.

🇨🇳 The napa cabbage is a type of Chinese cabbage that is widely used in East Asian cuisine. The first records of napa cabbage cultivation date back to the 15th century in the Yangtze River region in China.

🗺️ Since the 20th century, it has also become a widespread crop in Europe, the Americas, and Australia.

🕵️Spotted and reported by our very own .

🌐See also: https://www.nm.cz/en/about-us/news/100-treasures-100-stories-an-exceptional-exhibition-of-rare-jewels-from-the-imperial-collections-of-the-national-palace-museum-at-the-national-museum-of-the-czech-republic

🍊 The sweet orange (Citrus × sinensis) is not a natural species.
🧬 It is a hybrid, originating from a cross between Citrus maxima and Citrus reticulata in southern China several thousand years ago. The oldest mention of an orange in Chinese literature dates to 314 BCE. The hybridization must therefore have occurred more than 2,300 years ago.
🎄Oranges became associated with Christmas in Northern Europe because they ripen in winter and were once rare and imported. Their presence at midwinter celebrations symbolised abundance at a time of scarcity.
🎨 Still Life with Oranges, Jars, and Boxes of Sweets (1760) by Luis Meléndez