The State Hermitage Museum: Exhibitions

Nature generously endows man with its fruits. >From time immemorial the fruit play an important part in the world outlook of mankind. The orchard with the altar of Venus is a popular image in the art of Classical Antiquity. Putti play in this garden and collect there the sacred apples of love. Heracles, a hero of Classical mythology, being in the service of the king of Mycenae Eurystheus and making his heroic deeds, obtained the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides, the "daughters of the Night". The motif of the golden apples probably goes back to the tradition according to which the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden was an apple.

The serpent induced Eve to try a fruit of the tree of knowledge by saying: "Your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods knowing good and evil". Thus an apple became a symbol of the Fall. During the Renaissance in the pictures representing the Madonna and Child, an apple in the hands of Jesus Christ indicates that He saved the mankind from the original sin. The Virgin here is the second Eve who has redeemed the sin of the foremother.

The traditional attribute of Christ are grapes - the symbol of the propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the world and of the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Cherries give a hint at the possibility for the righteous men to obtain the Paradise in the Heavens instead of the Eden lost as a result of the Fall of Adam and Eve. Grapes and cherries together symbolize the death and Resurrection of Christ.

Fruits in 17th-century still lifes often have symbolic meaning. They remind of the Passion of Christ and His Resurrection, of perishable nature of the earthly life. Thus an apple, a pomegranate, grapes and nuts appear in the allegoric still lifes of that time. In 17th-century Flemish art the motif of abundance and generosity of nature is brilliantly depicted in the widely-spread pictures on the subject of the allegory of seasons. Painters of the 19th and 20th centuries, striving to reveal the symbolic meaning of the objects depicted in a still life, endowed the images of fruits with particular symbolism.

Statue of Heracles
1st-2nd centuries
Larger view

The Virgin and Child under an Apple-tree
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Larger view

The Virgin and Child
Master of the Female Half-Length Figures
Larger view

Still Life with Cherries and Cheese
Joseph Plepp
Larger view

Still Life with a Curtain
Paul Cézanne
Larger view

Fruit Shop
Frans Snyders
Larger view