SYMBOLOGY

Grapevine and wine are among the subjects that best lend themselves to symbolism, both sacred and profane. The room opens with a reminder of the Christianisation of Dionysian myths: wine – pharmakon – becomes the blood of Christ. Bacchus is the subversion of virtues, the satyrs lend their appearance and cunning demeanour to demons. The wine is identified with the blood of the Christ itself. Taken from the reinterpretation of Ovid, Boccaccio and Poliziano’s works, those myths are the starting point for religious and profane metaphors of the Renaissance age. The same applies to the figurative arts, as demonstrated by the  blossoming of the emblemata (room XIX) in the Counter-Reformation age, for which the intoxication (Noah) is understood as exceeding the measure. Pressing is a symbol of the passion of Christ, whose blood is identified with the must that comes out of it (see the 16th century Venetian istoriato, room XIV). The large bunch of grapes that the Jewish explorers bring back from the land of Canaan, to demonstrate the richness of its soil, symbolises the Body of the Redeemer in the New Testament. In the Jewish religion, the vineyard, symbol of the earth’s fertility in the pagan world, is considered as the sacred tree; in the Christian one, it is superior refrigerium.