Went to the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne at the weekend, and what should I find but a 15th century tryptich of the Madonna holding a crop wild relative flower? Apparently it symbolises virginity.
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Went to the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne at the weekend, and what should I find but a 15th century tryptich of the Madonna holding a crop wild relative flower? Apparently it symbolises virginity.
Or perhaps a representative example of the domesticated crop itself??
I do thank you for sharing this siting. It makes me wonder whether a certain young priest might have also spied this artistic rendering of a botanical and was inspired to grow them in the garden at Brno. Mendel kept bees and also started working with mice before it was suggested to him that mouse sex might be inappropriate in the abbey. So the peas came along after a fashion, and without a countervailing theory, perhaps this painting offered something?