Stories and Legends
History through rose-tinted glasses
Stories of the rose are woven through cultures and time. The rose's classical beauty, heavenly fragrance and thorny spikes have inspired myths and legends from the ancient Greeks to Native Americans.
More than any other flower the rose is linked to the divine. When Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, was born from the ocean white roses washed ashore. Hindu deities argued over its beauty. The purity of roses became associated with the Virgin Mary. Saints were said to smell of roses.
The rose is also associated with earthly powers. In both China and Europe roses were believed to carry protection from disease, while in France and England monarchs took the rose as a symbol of their sovereignty. Today, the rose expresses feelings of passion and love common to all people.
Heliogabalus feast
Death by a thousand roses
The Roman Emperor Heliogabalus celebrated his coronation by locking his guests in a banqueting hall and smothering them with rose petals. Several suffocated to death. The Roman custom of showering guests with rose petals was usually practised with less lethal effect in the belief the rose was an aphrodisiac and an antidote to drunkenness.
Why does the rose lie at the heart of this portrait?
The Italian artist Ceresa is more famous for painting sombre pictures of 17th-century Italian nobility than children and flowers. So the appearance of this rose is more than coincidence — the artist is giving clues using the language of art in the 1600s. It’s possible he intended the rose, which symbolises Venus the goddess of love, to suggest that the child is illegitimate. Where is the mother?
The rose has endured as a symbol for thousands of years, adopted across cultures over time. Despite its clear associations with love, beauty, passion and fragility, it still remains an enigma, many things to many people, the perfect canvas onto which we project ourselves.
Wisdom of the rose
'I intended to fill the skirts of my robe with roses, when I reached the rose-tree, as presents for my friends but the perfume of the flowers intoxicated me so much that I let go the hold of my skirts.'- Sa’di, the Gulistan
The Gulistan, or the Rose Garden, was written in 1259 by the Persian poet Sa’di. Its poems and stories use the metaphor of the rose garden to explore relationships within the human and natural worlds. Considered a source of great wisdom, words from the collection are inscribed over the entrance to the Hall of Nations at the United Nations in New York.
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