Colnaghi London is pleased to present its forthcoming exhibition centred on the role of wine within the Western iconographic tradition. Bringing together archaeological material alongside Old Master painting and sculpture, the exhibition traces a shift from wine’s function within communal and ritualised contexts to its later articulation as a vehicle for allegorical and symbolic meaning. Structured across antiquity, the early modern revival of Bacchic imagery, and the development of still life, the display considers how wine is variously configured within a broader visual language concerned with excess, transformation, and the transience of sensory experience.
 
In Vino Veritas: The Visual Rhetoric of Wine foregrounds wine as a primary signifier in the Western iconographic tradition. By juxtaposing archaeological material with Old Master paintings and sculptures, we trace a fundamental shift in the European gaze: from wine as a communal, ritualised tool to wine as a site of private, allegorical reflection. The narrative opens with the material culture of the Symposium. Here, Greek vessels - the krater, kylix, and amphora - are regarded as liturgical instruments and sophisticated carriers of meaning. This ritualised performance transitions during the Renaissance and Baroque into a Dionysian revival, tracing the metamorphosis of Bacchus from classical deity to a vehicle for exploring the "liminal" - the precarious line between civilised leisure and feral excess. Parodi’s masterful sculpture of Bacchus dialogues here with Van Dalen’s half bust portrait of the God of wine and Goya’s Priapus, engaging directly with the notion of paragone: the intellectual rivalry between the plastic and pictorial arts. The exhibition culminates in the evolution of the still life. In the Dutch banketje, Spanish bodegón, and Italian natura morta, wine is deconstructed into its constituent elements: the crystalline transparency of a Roemer, the bruised bloom of a vine, the smooth surface of the grapes. From the tonal restraint of Van Son to the warmer naturalism of Meléndez, these works carry a heavy symbolic subtext, functioning as ontological meditations on Vanitas, light, and the transience of the senses. In bridging the material presence of the ancient vessel with the elegant artifice of Baroque and Neoclassical masterpieces, the exhibition aims at reclaiming wine as a cornerstone of European visual rhetoric.

 

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