The pomegrenate

The pomegranate has been a recurring motif in art and literature. It is depicted in Chinese porcelains, Turkish textiles, Italian paintings, Norwegian coverlets, Spanish chests, Mexican embroideries and New Mexican colcha. It is mentioned in Greek mythology, in the Qur’an, the Bible and the Torah. Oscar Wilde wrote a collection of fairy tales called “A House of Pomegranates”, Homer referred to pomegrenates in his “Garden of Alcinous”, Shakespeare wrote of nightingales singing in pomegranate trees (Romeo and Juliet) and of picking kernals out of the pomegranates (All’s Well that Ends Well). Botticelli created “Madonna of the Pomegranate”. Paul Cezanne’s “Ginger Pot With Pomegranates and Pears” and Pierre Auguste Renoir “Nature Morte A La Grenade” both capture the beauty and power of the pomegranate. “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening” is a surrealist painting by Salvador Dali depicting Freud’s discovery that external stimuli could be the cause of a dream.

Most frequently the pomegranate is a symbol of fertility, birth and eternal life, owing to its abundance of seeds. Its deep blood red colour has led to its interpretation as a symbol of death. It also represents unity, illustrated by the many seeds bound together in a single skin.

The pomegranate is prominently featured in the myth of Persephone, the goddess of the Underworld. In one version of Greek mythology, Persephone was kidnapped by Hades and taken off to live in the underworld as his wife. Her mother, Demeter (goddess of the Harvest), went into mourning for her lost daughter and thus all green things ceased to grow. Zeus, the highest ranking of the Greek gods, could not allow the Earth to die, so he commanded Hades to return Persephone. It was the rule of the fates that anyone who consumed food or drink in the Underworld was doomed to spend eternity there. Persephone had no food, but Hades tricked her into eating six pomegranate seeds while she was still his prisoner and so, because of this, she was condemned to spend six months in the Underworld every year. During these six months, when Persephone is sitting on the throne of the Underworld next to her husband Hades, her mother Demeter mourns and no longer gives fertility to the earth. This became an ancient Greek explanation for the seasons. 

Dreaming of Pomegranates 1912, Felice Casorati (1883-1963 Italian painter, sculptor and printmaker)