绘画艺术描绘了历史上的水果和蔬菜

绘画艺术描绘了历史上的水果和蔬菜

An unusual partnership has sprung up in the hallways of Europe's great art museums. A plant geneticist and an art historian have realized that their skills are more complementary than they thought, and that working together could reveal fascinating information about the history and evolution of plant-based foods.

一种不同寻常的合作关系在欧洲各大艺术博物馆的走廊里如雨后春笋般出现。一位植物遗传学家和一位艺术历史学家已经意识到，他们的技能比他们想象的更具互补性，同时合作可以揭示植物性食品历史和进化的迷人信息。

The study authors in front of a painting.Liesbeth Everaert / via Eurekalert 

Ive De Smet, who works at VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology in Belgium, and David Vergauwen, a lecturer on cultural history at Amarant, a cultural institution in Belgium, have been friends since high school. They occasionally travel together and enjoy visiting museums and art galleries. It was while debating an unrecognizable piece of fruit in a 17th-century painting at the Hermitage that they realized art could tell them things about a fruit or vegetable's history that genetics could not.

比利时VIB-UGent植物系统生物学中心的艾弗•德•斯梅特和比利时文化机构阿玛兰特的文化史讲师戴维•维高文从高中就是朋友。他们偶尔会一起旅行，一起参观博物馆和美术馆。在隐居馆，他们正在讨论一幅17世纪的画作中一个认不出来的水果，他们意识到艺术可以告诉他们一些遗传学无法告诉他们的关于水果或蔬菜的历史。

Plant geneticists are able to decode the genomes of ancient crops, based on rare preserved seeds found in tombs and elsewhere, but there are still "significant gaps in the timelines of where and when many modern-day fruits, vegetables, and cereal crops evolved" (via Eurekalert). Nor can geneticists give accurate descriptions of a fruit or vegetable's appearance.

植物遗传学家能够根据在坟墓和其他地方发现的稀有保存种子来解码古代作物的基因组，但是“在现代水果、蔬菜和谷类作物进化的时间和地点上仍然有很大的差距”(通过Eurekalert)。遗传学家也不能准确地描述水果或蔬菜的外观。

That's where art can help.

这就是艺术可以帮忙的地方

De Smet told CNN that paintings offer missing information for pre-photographic times. They can confirm the presence of certain domesticated species and show how growers may have bred for specific characteristics, altering appearances over time.

德·斯米特告诉CNN，绘画提供了前摄影时代缺失的信息。它们可以确认某些驯化物种的存在，并显示出种植者可能是如何为了特定的特性而繁殖，随着时间的推移而改变外观。

Examining the way fruits and vegetables looked in the past may also reveal information about where foods came from, how common they were, what they were eaten with, as well as trade routes and newly conquered lands (via CNN). In this sense, De Smet explained, "Our line of inquiry does not limit itself to genetics and art history, but also includes the field of cultural anthropology and social history as well."

研究过去水果和蔬菜的样子还可以揭示食物的来源、常见程度、食用方式，以及贸易路线和新征服的土地。在这个意义上，德斯密特解释说:“我们的研究范围不仅限于遗传学和艺术史，还包括文化人类学和社会历史领域。”

"Fruit and a Jug on a Table" by Paul Cézanne, an artist who frequently depicted plant-based foods in his art. Paul Cézanne / Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

It's important to have a "control" when assessing how accurate a painting is. For their research, De Smet and Vergauwen use roses, which also have "a long history of breeding and centuries-old depictions." So if an artist has painted roses, it helps to determine whether his or her portrayals of fruits and vegetables are accurate. For instance, you wouldn't look to Picasso to "figure out what a pear looked like in the early 20th century," but you could rely on late Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch to give an accurate illustration of a strawberry's biological structure, although "the fruit is taller than the people painted alongside it."

在评估一幅画的精确度时，有一个“控制”是很重要的。在他们的研究中，德斯密特和维高温使用了玫瑰，它们也有“悠久的繁殖历史和长达几个世纪的描述”。因此，如果一个艺术家画过玫瑰，这有助于确定他或她对水果和蔬菜的描绘是否准确。例如，你不会指望毕加索“弄清楚20世纪初的梨是什么样子的，”但你可以依靠后期荷兰画家波希要准确说明草莓的生物结构,尽管“水果比旁边画它的人还高。”

De Smet and Vergauwen recently published a paper in the journal Trends in Plant Science that explains their unique approach to analyzing fruit and vegetable history. They describe the challenges in searching through countless works of art for depictions that are often omitted from titles.

德斯密特和维高文最近在《植物科学趋势》杂志上发表了一篇论文，解释了他们分析水果和蔬菜历史的独特方法。他们描述了在无数的艺术作品中寻找经常从标题中省略的描述的挑战。

Because of these limitations, the pair is calling on the general public to help in the search for historic, artistic produce. If you see something that may be of interest, you can email it to them or use an app that is currently being developed. "This is the beauty of doing this kind of research today," De Smet said. "Crowdsourcing tools will allow you to access a lot more data faster than we ever could by just visiting museums." The overall campaign is referred to as #ArtGenetics.

由于这些限制，两人呼吁公众帮助寻找具有历史意义的艺术作品。如果你看到了你感兴趣的东西，你可以发邮件给他们，或者使用正在开发的应用程序。“这就是今天做这类研究的美妙之处，”德斯密特说。“众包工具将让你以比我们仅仅参观博物馆更快的速度获取更多的数据。”整个活动被称为#艺术遗传学。