Discovering Ancient Cultivars in Italian Painting
An Italian scientist consults paintings to better understand the produce of the past and how they can help us weather the changing climate in the future.
In fact, Dalla Ragione has spent more than a decade scouring the masterpieces of 15th- and 16th-century art for answers to one of the great questions of Italian agriculture: Whatever happened to the boisterous selection of fruits that, for centuries, were a celebrated part of Italian cuisine and culture? Slowly and indefatigably, she has been rediscovering those fruits, first in archives and paintings and then, incredibly, in small forgotten plots across Italy. Her nonprofit, Archeologia Arborea, is helping farmers and governments around the world preserve and even bring back into cultivation all manner of forgotten fruits. In the process, Dalla Ragione has become a globally renowned fruit detective, by recognizing in her country’s Renaissance artworks not only exceptional examples of cultural patrimony but also hidden messages from a bygone era of genetic abundance that can offer clues about how to recover what was seemingly lost.