Tenacious Tendrils: Replicating Nature in South Italian Vase Painting
“A more plausible interpretation is that they are poppies, several species of which, including the sleep-inducing (and potentially fatal) opium poppy (Papaver somniferum), are native to the central Mediterranean region (Pignatti 2011, vol. 1, pp. 354–35) (Figure 27). The narcotic effects of the plant’s latex may well have been viewed as a suitable allegory for death as a blissful, painless sleep, and thus appropriate subject matter for a funerary vase.[92]
| [92] | Lohmann also identifies these flowers as poppies (Lohmann 1979, p. 121). On poppies in ancient Greece and Italy: Baumann 1993, p. 72; Jashemski and Meyer 2002, pp. 137–39; Jannot 2009, pp. 84–85; and Fabbri 2017.” |
