Almost Certainly Our Most Famous Painter of Medlars

June 28, 2017 8:41 AM

Caravaggio's Fruit is a paper by horticulturist Jules Janick, originally published in Chronica Horticulturae, that examines we can tell about the fruit seen in 11 different paintings of Caravaggio. It includes a discussion of the fruits themselves, even exploring the different cultivars available in late 16th century Italy, and explains many of the fungal, insect, and nutritional causes for the blemishes Caravaggio famously depicted.

Also available in pdf form as originally published.

posted by Copronymus (11 comments total)

Also available in pdf form as originally published.

Thanks for that. The web version's light-blue-text-on-dark-blue-background is an affront to the eyes.
posted by jedicus at 9:05 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yeah, the PDFs are huge but much easier to read. Thanks for this, I love it.
posted by PussKillian at 9:17 AM on June 28, 2017

As it's just the tail end of nespole seaon here: grazie mille, love this!
posted by progosk at 9:36 AM on June 28, 2017

Very interesting, I'd love to see what they think of Arcimboldo.
posted by adept256 at 10:46 AM on June 28, 2017

That wine glass in Fig. 4 is super tippy.

Gonna need some club soda.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 12:20 PM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Very interesting, I'd love to see what they think of Arcimboldo.

He seems a bit bananas.
posted by Fizz at 12:22 PM on June 28, 2017

...and the carafe too...

Ugh, Bacchus, pull it together. You're going to get sloppy drunk and embarrass everyone.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 12:23 PM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Arcimboldo probably had never seen a banana.
posted by adept256 at 2:42 PM on June 28, 2017

I can't wait to find some medlar fruit. I fell in love with quinces in cooking, and making marmalade. Medlars would be good like that, and as a component of wine. I bet it makes an incredible fruit butter, and it could be augmented in flavor with which ever thing like dark rum, or even Lillet. There is a valley 40 miles east of here that has an orchard of these.
posted by Oyéah at 5:44 PM on June 28, 2017

Great post. I love both fruit and Caravaggio.

The author displays impressive knowledge of the signs of diseases and pests:

All of the apples show defects: one has a precise representation of a series of scab lesions caused by the fungal pathogen Venturia inaequalis, one has a wormhole (probably from a codling moth)
...
peach attached to a stem with wormholes in the leaf resembling damage by oriental fruit moth (Orthosia hibisci). Beneath it is a single bicolored apple, shown from a stem perspective with two insect entry holes, probably codling moth, one of which shows secondary rot at the edge; one blushed yellow pear with insect predations resembling damage by leaf roller (Archips argyospita); four figs, two white and two purple—the purple ones dead ripe and splitting along the sides, plus a large fig leaf with a prominent fungal scorch lesion resembling anthracnose (Glomerella cingulata); and a single unblemished quince with a leafy spur showing fungal spots

Also, after I dragged the divider over to reduce the width of the text, I actually preferred the website over the PDF.
posted by exogenous at 7:15 AM on June 29, 2017

I love stuff like this. Reminds me of efforts (the details escape me) to glean animal population data in the Middle Ages using parchment from surviving books.
posted by delight at 10:18 AM on June 29, 2017