My husband loves grapes. They are his favorite fruit. While I enjoy them as well (especially fermented ones), I just love how beautiful they look. My art is always a reflection of my life and it is not surprising that I have painted many grapes. I hope I can show through my work how beautiful simple everyday things like grapes are.
For this blog I went a bit deeper and found some interesting facts :
A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the woody grapes vines.
The cultivation of the domesticated grape began 6,000–8,000 years ago. Yeast one of the earliest domesticated microorganisms, occurs naturally on the skins of grapes, leading to the discovery of alcoholic drinks such as wine.
The earliest archeological evidence of wine-making in human culture dates from 8,000 years ago .
In the Bible, grapes are used as a symbol of altruism.
Some common symbolic meanings for grapes include charity, wrath, and abundance. Famously, these meanings are used in the Bible and the well-known song "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." They are also used in the book "The Grapes of Wrath," by John Steinbeck.
The Greek God, Dionysus is the god of fertility and wine. He is credited with creating wine and viticulture. Bacchus is the comparative Roman God of wine. Bacchus was probably a copy of the Greek God Dionysus. The grapevine across this entire region is tied to fertility, prosperity social, and cultural rituals. Greek songs and literature like the works of Homer have extensive references to wine made from grapes.
The Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that seventy percent of the cultivation of the grape is for winemaking. Of the 10000 types of grapes, 1300 are used in winemaking.
I hope you all enjoyed this information on one of our oldest cultivated berries.
“The juice of the grape is the liquid quintessence of concentrated sunbeams.”
Thomas Love Peacock
Here are a few grape paintings that are available through my website:
