White Grapes - Pierre-Joseph Redouté - Framed Print - 20"H x 16"W

White Grapes - Pierre-Joseph Redouté - Framed Print - 20"H x 16"W

Pierre-Joseph Redouté, was a painter and botanist from the Southern Netherlands, known for his watercolours of roses, lilies and other flowers at Malmaison. He was nicknamed "the Raphael of flowers" and has been called the greatest botanical illustrator of all time.

He was an official court artist of Queen Marie Antoinette, and he continued painting through the French Revolution and Reign of Terror. Redouté survived the turbulent political upheaval to gain international recognition for his precise renderings of plants, which remain as fresh in the early 21st century as when first painted.

He was painting during a period in botanical illustration that is noted for the publication of outstanding folios. Redouté produced over 2,100 published plates depicting over 1,800 different species, many never rendered before.

Today he is seen as an important heir to the great flower painters Brueghel, Ruysch, van Huysum and de Heem.

The cultivation of the domesticated grape began 6,000–8,000 years ago. Yeast, occurs naturally with grapes, leading to the innovation of alcoholic drinks such as wine.

By the 9th century AD the city of Shiraz was known to produce some of the finest wines in the Middle East. Thus it has been proposed that Syrah red wine is named after Shiraz, a city in Persia where the grape was used to make Shirazi wine.

"White" grapes are actually green in color, and are evolutionarily derived from the purple grape. Mutations in two regulatory genes of white grapes turn off production of anthocyanins, which are responsible for the color of purple grapes