AN AUSPICIOUS START TO THE YEAR OF THE TIGER, 2022
1. Ancestral Citrus
Native to Asia, the pomelo (Citrus maxima) and the mandarin (Citrus reticulata) are two of the “ancestral citruses” from which many of the citruses we now have, including oranges, descended. (Sweet oranges, for example, are a hybrid of pomelos and mandarins.)The mandarins pictured here are kishus, a varietal transplanted to Japan from southern China in the 1200s and then to the U.S. from Japan in the 1980s. The U.S. variety is seedless and incredibly sweet. The pomelo-looking fruit in this work are oro blancos, which were bred in Southern California from a cross between pomelos and white grapefruit, to produce a sweeter and less bitter version of the pomelo/grapefruit.
image by Agricolae (2018) via wikimedia commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
2. Flies in Still Life
Flies have a long history in European art and in particular in still life, representing a reminder of mortality and corruption (that we are supposed to try to keep at bay). Butterflies, on the other hand, symbolized resurrection and salvation. Pictured below: Raphaelle Peale’s Peaches Covered by a Handkerchief (1819).