We are talking about an extraordinary fruit of the month of November, the pumpkin, the star of many recipes, but also of stories, legends, and works of art!
The pumpkin “Cucurbita” arrived in Europe after the discovery of the “New World” along with other vegetables; it was especially popular among the great aristocracies before spreading to the general population. Pumpkins are easy to store, their seeds were useful in the preparation of medicines, and they were believed to attract money. They are beautiful and colorful, like a sphere, a serpent, an oriental turban… A truly prodigious fruit.
Raffaello was among the first to depict the pumpkin in art, in Rome, at the Villa Farnesina: in festoons and garlands, and in the hands of Mercury, protector of commerce.
Around the mid-16th century, the pumpkin began to appear in Flemish paintings depicting markets, often with sexual overtones, as the pumpkin recalls the shapes of the female body and pregnancy.
At the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, visitors can admire several splendid paintings by Vincenzo Campi in which the pumpkin appears, such as La Fruttivendola (1580), where a sliced pumpkin with visible seeds is displayed in a basket like a trophy. Despite the title, the true protagonist of the painting is not the shopkeeper but the personification of Nature. The message is that all fruits are part of Divine Creation. The painting depicts fruits and vegetables from all seasons—something impossible to achieve at the time, when greenhouses did not exist. La Fruttivendola belongs to a cycle of allegories of the four elements and represents the allegory of Earth. In the allegory of water, entitled La Pescivendola, the pumpkin appears in a rather curious scene, embraced by the tentacles of an octopus. The masculine element (the fish) merges with the feminine one (the pumpkin), and the presence of a child in the painting emphasizes the idea of fertilization.
In the same period, another famous Milanese painter, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, created portraits by combining natural elements. The pumpkin appears in the portrait of Emperor Rudolf II of Prague, where it replaces the chest, the seat of the heart.
Long before the discovery of America, only one variety of pumpkin was known in Europe and Asia: the “Lagenaria”, small and flask-shaped. It belonged to the world of ordinary people—workers and pilgrims—who, as early as Roman times, ate its pulp and used the rind to create small, lightweight, waterproof bottles, perfect containers for water or salt, or even to make lanterns or candle holders.
Flasks of this kind, attached to staffs or to pilgrims’ belts, appear in numerous paintings in the iconography of Saint Roch and Saint James. These two saints, closely associated with pilgrims, bring us back to the Pavia area and to the beautiful church of San Giacomo della Cerretta, located near Belgioioso, right along the Via Francigena. We can easily imagine the many pilgrims who passed through here, probably carrying a small flask made from a pumpkin as well.
After talking so much about art, let’s remember that northern Italian cuisine uses pumpkin in many recipes: from Ferrara’s “cappellacci” to Mantua-style pumpkin gnocchi, from pumpkin purée as an alternative to the classic potato version, to the traditional pumpkin risotto found both in the Milan and Pavia areas. So, in this season, pumpkins don’t just add color to famous paintings, but also to our tables!
