Suggestion: Schubert, Piano trio No 2, op. 100, D. 929, Andante con moto (1827)
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The Muses’ companion since Antiquity, wine has been depicted through many different art forms, such as literature, music and photography, as well as architecture, decorative and fine arts. Wine seems to have been a particular source of fascination for painters.
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TO GIVE DRINK TO THE THIRSTY
Domenico Ghirlandaio (School of), fresco after restoration, 1478/81 - Oratorio dei Buonimi di San Martino, Florence, Italy
It was already recognised that wine was a staple product. It was used to fight the cold in winter and to cool off in summer. But it was more than just a simple drink: restoring strength and energy, wine was considered a real food with a high calorific value and many mineral salts. As water in the Middle Ages was hardly drinkable, it had to be diluted with wine.
Artists, especially painters, have always acted as commentators. Wine and the Vine have been part of our social, cultural, religious, political and economic history throughout the ages. By telling their history, these artists help us better understand our own.
>> THEMATIC TOUR: 5 COLLECTIONS, 33 PAINTING GALLERIES
While painting, including canvases, frescoes and illuminations, takes centre-stage, the Virtual Wine Museum also exhibits many other art forms. It’s the museum of the “Wine of the Arts”, telling the story of 5,000 years of history of wine and the vine from Antiquity to the present day.
Let us suggest the following route around the museum: Wine and the Arts to whet your appetite, the Focus: a look, a work to awaken your senses and the Gallery Collections to taste at your leisure or by following the guided tour below and at the bottom of the page. If you are pressed for time, why not take a quick trip around The Virtual Wine Museum’s selected highlights?
Wine-drinkers, Painters bear witness
Wine-drinkers have been portrayed by every kind of artist, and by great masters as well as more minor painters. One of these painters, Manet (who played a significant role in the representation of wine in art) believed that art should reflect life. Wine, when represented on canvas, is no exception to this rule.
Such images are documentary, journalistic: they tell us the role played by wine in all walks of life, without exceptions. Daily life, social life, drunkenness and savoir-boire. Wine has been used as a social marker...
THE BROTHERS CLARKE WITH OTHER GENTLEMEN TAKING WINE
Gawen Hamilton, between 1730 and 1735 - Yale University, New Haven, CT, US
Wine takes centre stage in this painting by Renoir. Placed at the heart of the action, wine plays an active role and contributes to the painting’s happy, serene atmosphere. The people in the painting are shown as happy to be together and enjoying the delights of friendship. Duncan Phillips describes this work as 'overflowing with contagious good humour'.
LUNCHEON OF THE BOATING PARTY Auguste Renoir, 1880/81 - The Phillips Collection, Washington DC
A new perspective on the history of wine
Like physical museums, virtual museums aim to promote culture and to make it accessible for everyone. Their aptitude for this all the greater because they are able to create the very type of "imaginary museum" imagined by André Malraux in Le Musée imaginaire: “Today, [we] have colour reproductions of most great works at our disposition… [We] discover a great number of secondary paintings… An Imaginary Museum has opened, which will push to breaking point the incomplete confrontation imposed by real museums… I call “Imaginary Museum” the totality of what people can know today even without entering a museum." Malraux’s prediction has come true; indeed, it’s gone far beyond even his far-sighted vision: new digital technologies have dissociated photography and its digital platform, and have promoted the massive sharing of top-quality digital images.
With The Virtual Wine Museum, we are able to visit an "Imaginary Museum" - not an ephemeral product of the imagination, but a significant collection of artworks. Confrontations are widely permitted and practised, be they within a single theme, between artists, or from one era to another. In the same way The Virtual Wine Museum offers a new perspective on the knowledge of wine and its history, its roles and uses.
Malraux' imaginary museum has become a virtual museum >>
ˋThanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists […]ʼ - Marcel Proust, Time Regained: In Search of Lost Time, Modern Library Classics
The Virtual Wine Museum is a non-profit venture and open to all. It is a recognized reference site. It has been selected in 2020 by the jury of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), who have awarded it a Special Mention in their Fine Arts category. The museum is also a member of the international network of partners of the UNESCO Chair on “Culture et Traditions Vitivinicoles” at the University of Burgundy.
Could this harvest scene have really taken place?
Van Gogh painted two landscapes featuring vines in oils –The Green Vine and The Red Vine – during his period in Arles, where he lived from 20th February 1888. The Red Vine is one of the artist’s best-known paintings, and often said to be the only one sold in his lifetime – in February 1890. He produced a harvest scene in late October, near Arles, depicting red vines. This is decidedly odd: Arles is in a Mediterranean region, a harvest by that time is still terribly late. Usually, the grape harvest takes place before the vines turn red. There is a plethora of grape-pickers – twenty-one! Night has almost fallen. What to make of this harvest scene? Could it have really taken place as Van Gogh depicts it, so late in the year? Let’s examine the evidence in Van Gogh’s Letters to his brother Théo...
The Rubaiyat, or quatrains of Omar Khayyam (11th century) offer a counterpoint to the classical Persian miniatures presented here. Wine appears frequently, presented as a remedy both for the melancholy caused by the passage of time and the brevity of life. “Drink and be merry” is the refrain of these epicurean verses. For Khayyam, wine is “the gate of joy”. Wine tastings, early springtime, amorous dreams and scenes of gallantry… “The caravan of life shall always pass/Beware that is fresh as sweet young grass/Let’s not worry about what tomorrow will amass/Fill my cup again, this night will pass, alas.”
Eugène Atget takes us on a stroll around “Vieux Paris”. Wandering from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, we’re on the hunt for bars, cabarets, cafés, restaurants and wine merchants – like a bougnat's shop (Auvergnat living in Paris), where wines and liquors jostle firewood and sacks of coal. Atget’s obstinate desire to lay reality bare makes him the grandfather of modern photography.
Still on display, two other exhibitions focus on art of today. Our street art exhibition shows Bacchus and wine taking over the urban landscape. For the last fifty years, graffiti has become more and more visible. Spray paint and markers are tools of choice for street artists. While some see graffiti as undesirable, others consider its most elaborate forms a type of art that deserves attention.
Burgundy-based abstract painter Bertrand Sallard gives us his take on the tasks of the “vine to wine” process dictated by the seasons. Meanwhile, our Street Art exhibition shows Bacchus and wine taking over the urban landscape.
For its latest, second edition, the Virtual Wine Museum would like to suggest some personal highlights from its collections and exhibitions. This selection will evolve over time and reflect new inspirations. Check back regularly for our favourite works of each era: Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Modern Era.
> Discover the full works by clicking on the icons. Click on the link displayed to visit the original galleries.
ANTIQUITY: from the emergence of writing in Mesopotamia towards 3600 BC to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD.
UR-NANSHE'S VOTIVE RELIEF, KING OF LAGASH ca. 2550/2500 B.C., Tello, ancient city of Girsu, Sumer - Louvre Museum, Paris
'THE CUP-BEARER', Seated figurine (or idol), marble H. 15.2 cm Early Cycladic II, 2600/2300 B.C. - Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, Greece
GRAPE HARVEST, TOMB OF NEBAMUN Dynasty 18th ca. 1422/1411 BC. - Theban Necropolis, Valley of the Nobles, Thebes, Egypt
RHYTON IN THE SHAPE OF A BIRD ca. early 1st millennium B.C. Northwestern Iran - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
ARMENIAN AMBASSADORS OFFER WINE AND A HORSE TO THE PERSIAN EMPEROR (Darius), Relief, ca. 515 BC. – Apadana, Persepolis, Iran (Persia)
DIONYSOS RIDING A PANTHER 120/-80 B.C. - House of the Masks, Delos, Greece
MIDDLE AGES: from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD to the discovery of America and the taking of Granada by the royal armies of Aragon and Castile, which both took place in 1492.
THE TEMPTATION OF EVE Attr. Gilebert , lintel from Saint Lazare Cathedral, Autun, after restoration, ca. 1130 - Rolin Museum, Autun, France
HARVEST Doorway arch, zodiac calendar and calendar of the seasons, from a 12th-century Roman church - Civray, Poitou, France
LIBRA ZODIAC SIGN, TREADING OF THE GRAPES West rose window, Zodiac, 1220/25 - Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris
THE HARVEST OF THE EARTH, THE TRINITY APOCALYPSE, ca. 1250/60 - The Trinity College Library, Cambridge, UK
MONKEY DRAWING WINE Pontifical de Guillaume Durand ca. 1357 - Ste-Genevieve Library, Paris
THE HARVEST OF THE EARTH Jacobello Alberegno 1360/90, Tempera on panel - Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice, Italy
MODERN ERA: started with the taking of Granada and the discovery of America in 1492 and continues to the present day.
AN ALLEGORY OF GLUTTONY or THE SHIP OF THE FOOLS (LA NEF DES FOUS) H. Bosch, ca. 1495/1500 - Musée du Louvre, Paris
A YOUNG MAN OFFERING A CUP OF WINE TO A GIRL Persian miniature, 16th century - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
VIRGIN AND CHILD Joos van Cleve, ca. 1515/20 - Private collection
THE TRIUMPH OF BACCHUS Benvenuto Tisi (Il Garofalo), ca. 1540 - Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, Germany
LOT AND HIS DAUGHTERS Lucas Cranach, 1553 - Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany
THE LAST SUPPER Tintoretto, 1559 - St François-Xavier Church, Paris, France
NEOLITHIC JAR RECOVERED FROM A NEOLITHIC SITE IN GEORGIA © Georgian National Museum
Scientists agree that vinification was first practised in the Caucuses, since the 19th century considered the homeland of vine cultivation. Georgia has confirmed its position as the birthplace of viticulture with some new archaeological discoveries. Winegrowing originated over 8,000 years ago, almost ten decades earlier than previously thought. Before the announcement, the earliest evidence of viticulture – dating from around 5,000 BC – had been found in Iran’s Zagros mountains. Residue found in eight large ceramic containers had been identified as wine by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, the Georgian National Museum and the University of Toronto. This discovery is the earliest evidence of winemaking by humans to date.
Blog (Fr.): Wine, Art, and Museum News | Works to know >>
This scene of ecstasy depicts satyrs and Maenads, Bacchus’ usual companions. Satyrs are ambivalent creatures, part-man and part-stag, who live out in the wild. They make up the “Dionesic procession” accompanying the god and are associated with the Maenads, who follow on behind. The latter are not priestesses, but play an important role in religion and worship. They participate in the mysteries and festivals held in honour of the god. Personifying the orgiastic spirits of nature, they dance frenetically, plunging themselves into mystic ecstasy. The Bacchantes (Roman name for the Maenads) were said to behave like ferocious beasts.
DIONYSIAC ECTASY Roman sarcophagus, 2nd century, from Perga, ancient Greek city in Anatolia - Archaeological Museum, Antalya, Turkey
What's new at the Virtual Wine Museum?
COURT LADIES ON A PALACE CONCERT, China ca. 836/ca. 907, silk - National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
GIRL BRINGING JAR OF WINE, China 17th cent., ink and color on silk - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, USA
PORTRAIT OFE SHAOYU IN THE GUISE OF LIU LING, China ca. 1795, ink and color on silk - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
POET FISHERMAN, Korea 1800s, ink and colour on silk - The Cleveland Museum of Art, United States
COMPANIONS FORCING A GEISHA TO DRINK FOR A CUP OF WINE, Japan End of 1810s - Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio, United States
WITH WINE AND BOOKS ON BOARD, Japan 1786/1868, woodblock print - British Museum, London
RECENTLY-ADDED WORKS: New works, restored works and works reproduced in better and accurate quality
APOSTLE St JOHN THE EVANGELIST El Greco, c. 1608/14 - Museo del Greco, Toledo, Spain
CAFE SCENE, LES HALLES, PARIS Robert Doisneau, 1953
BACCHUS, VENUS AND ARIADNE Tintoretto, 1576 - Palazzo Ducale, Sala dell'Anticollegio, Venice, Italy
THE MYSTIC WINEPRESS Anonymous, Southern Andes, 1700/1800 - Museo Pedro de Osma, Barranco, Peru
BEARDED MAN CROWNED OWITH VINE LEAVES Pablo Picasso, 1962, lino print - Private collection
NATURE MORTE VIVANTE (FAST-MOVING STILL LIFE) Salvador Dali, 1956 - Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA
"THE 'PINARD' ARRIVES AT THE FRONT." Le Pays de France, n°140, June 21, 1917
The "documentary" photos ground us in reality while adding their own viewpoint. Four themes confirm this beyond dispute: the transportation of wine, the wine-growers’ crisis of 1907, the Prohibition period (1920-33) in the USA, and the poilus' plonk of the 1914-18 Great War.
The chronic overproduction of wine at the start of the 20th century would end up being absorbed by the “poilus”. The war began on 3rd August 1914 and, before the month was even over, the wine producers of the south of France had donated 200,000 hectolitres to soldiers headed for the front. The wine consumed by the poilus kept up the soldiers’ morale by giving them heart, and helping them fight their fear. For Christophe Lucand, « it soon became essential that the men hold on. The military authorities were haunted by previous defeats – that of 1870 and the disasters that followed. They feared a break in the front line.” Here, in a village won back from the enemy, a truck distributes the precious drink.
While "pinard" », or cheap wine, is most often associated with the WW1 "poilus", it was served to soldiers long before this in several North-Eastern regiments. Colonial troops and the French Navy had been consuming it since 1905 at least. Thus was pinard given to the Marines, who had just absorbed heavy losses on the Nieuport-Dixmude front, in late 1914. They needed courage too!
History of wine, archaelogical discoveries, language and words of wine; painting movements, museums of the world, the language and words of painting: click to find out more (Fr.) >>
