In the cultures of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome, wine was a sacred element, often linked to religious rites and the funerary sphere. In Egypt, pharaohs were buried with wine amphorae, considered nourishment for the afterlife. In classical Greece, Dionysus (or Bacchus to the Romans) embodied mystical ecstasy and the vital energy released by intoxication: an ambiguous god, at once the bringer of chaos and rebirth.
Representations of Dionysus and his retinue satyrs, maenads, and Silenes tell of the abandonment of rational limits and contact with the divine. In Attic vases, Roman mosaics and ancient reliefs, wine becomes a spiritual medium, a threshold between the earthly world and the otherworldly dimension, between nature and culture.
With the advent of Christianity, wine changes context but does not lose its symbolic power. During the Last Supper, Christ identifies it with his own blood, consecrating it in the rite of the Eucharist. From Giotto to Leonardo da Vinci, representations of the Supper take on a strongly spiritual character, where the chalice becomes an emblem of sacrifice, communion, and the promise of eternal life.
In later centuries, Christian iconography reinforced the link between wine and redemption: the blood of Christ that gushed out during the crucifixion was often transfigured into liturgical wine, accentuating the saving power of this beverage.
The Renaissance rediscovers the classical heritage, merging it with a new centrality of man. Wine once again becomes an expression of earthly pleasure, sensual beauty and the richness of the senses. This is the time of works such as Caravaggio’s Sick Bacchus, in which wine becomes an ambivalent symbol: between desire and decadence, between vitality and vanitas.
During the Baroque, especially in Flemish still lifes, wine appears alongside fruit, withered flowers and skulls: a metaphor for the fleeting nature of existence and the illusions of worldly pleasures. No longer just an object of celebration, but a moral warning.
Between the 19th and 20th centuries, art looks at the everyday. With the Impressionists Manet, Degas, and Renoir, wine becomes part of urban life: it is drunk in cafes, bistros, and public gardens. It is a common gesture, but rich in meaning. Degas’ Absinthe tells of the dark side of modern alienation, where wine becomes a symbol of loneliness.
At the same time, artists such as Van Gogh and social realism painters restore wine to its rural and communal dimensions: grape harvests, barrels, peasant festivals. Wine becomes a cultural root, a link to the land, an expression of popular identity.
In contemporary art, wine takes on even more fluid values. It is memory, body, spirituality, but also a conceptual object. Some artists employ it as the very material of works, exploiting its color, transformation, smell: wine not only depicts, but also composes the work.
Others use it to explore themes such as cultural identity, tradition, or social conflict. The red of wine can evoke passion or violence, intimacy or collectivity. In this context, wine is no longer just a symbol but also an expressive medium.
Wine in art traverses eras, religions, and styles, transforming but always remaining present. From ancient sacredness to the Christian Eucharist, from Renaissance pleasure to modern drama, to the conceptual reflection of our time, wine has narrated the human being in all its nuances.
It is spiritual and sensual, material and metaphysical, joy and sorrow, and that is precisely why it continues to inspire. It is not just an artistic subject, but a key to understanding humanity. A lens through which to observe the transformations of society, faith, body and soul.
Like a well-aged wine, its presence in art has also sedimented layers of meaning, allowing a new but always deeply human flavor to emerge with each era.
The article Wine: symbol of spirit and matter through the ages comes from TheNewyorker.
