Isabella Dalla Ragione spends a lot of time poring over Renaissance paintings and centuries-old frescoes. But as the Smithsonian explains, the 67-year-old isn't an art historian, exactly. Instead, she might be the world's most renowned "fruit detective." Dalla Ragione is an Italian agronomist who discovered that these old paintings depict varieties of peaches, pears, apricots, apples, grapes, cherries, etc., that were thriving at one time but have since all but disappeared from the world. "Slowly and indefatigably, she has been rediscovering those fruits, first in archives and paintings and then, incredibly, in small forgotten plots across Italy," writes Mark Schapiro. But it's no mere academic exercise: Dalla Ragione also takes samples and cultivates them at her family farm in Umbria.
It's a living museum of sorts, but her nonprofit organization, Archeologia Arborea, works with farmers in Italy and around the world in a bid to restore these forgotten fruits—and bolster agricultural diversity at a time when climate change is making that ever more crucial. "Twenty years ago, nobody thought about biodiversity," she says. "They kidded me, they said, 'You are very romantic to work with these ancient varieties.' Now people understand: We need these old varieties to answer for the problems of the future. Without them, without roots, we are just leaves in the wind." The full story includes all kinds of interesting nuggets, including Dalla Ragione's discovery that a fruit depicted in a Giovanni Bellini painting known as Madonna of the Pear actually depicts a cow-nose apple. Read it here. (More art stories.)
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