The History of the Rose
The queen of flowers through the ages.
Originally, in Vincent Van Gogh’s Roses (1891), the roses were pink—the color has faded—and would have created a contrast of complementary colors with the green. Traces of pink can be seen along the tabletop and rose petals in the present painting. Such combinations of complements fascinated Van Gogh. Painted on the eve of his departure from the asylum in Saint-Rémy in May 1890, the paint is so thick that Van Gogh left this and one other rose painting behind. (Roses, 1890, Vincent van Gogh, Public Domain via The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Roses, the traditional flower of Valentine’s Day, are symbolic of politics, war, beauty, care, devotion, and love.
The red rose, especially, is the ultimate symbol of love.
With over 400,000 flower species when and how did the rose become so revered in Western culture as a sign of love in all its qualities, to the point of cliché?
Fossil evidence suggests the rose is about 35 million years old, but we don’t need to go back that far to fully appreciate the centuries-old cultural meaning behind the queen of flowers.
| Ancient Greece |
Ever realize “rose” is an anagram of Eros, the Greek god of love?
Eros was the Greek god of carnal love, passionate and emotional love. In Latin, he is called Amor (love) or Cupid (desire). Through tradition, he became known as the son of Aphrodite, goddess of sexual love and beauty. In art, Eros is often portrayed as a winged and chubby boy with a bow and arrow.
Venus and Cupid, 1520s, Lorenzo Lotto, Public Domain via The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Legend has it that when Aphrodite discovered a murder plot against her mortal lover, Adonis, she dashed through a rose bush to warn him and cut her ankles on its thorns. Her blood turned the white petals red. Upon discovering that she was too late and he had been gored by a wild boar, she wept as he died in her arms. Her tears mingled with his blood and burst into anemones, hence the creation story behind red roses.
In another version, Adonis was more superficially wounded and Aphrodite, while running to him, scratched herself on the thorns of a rose bush. Her blood started to flow at once and the white flowers on the bush turned to red.
As for the thorns? Cupid was faulted with shooting arrows into a rose garden after being stung by a bee. It is because of this, legend says, that roses have grown thorns.
| The Roman Empire |
The pattern of Greek legends is closely followed by those which emerged in Rome.
In Roman mythology, red roses have been linked to Venus, the Goddess of Love. As Venus was running to warn her lover, Adonis, about a murder plot against him, she cut her ankles when she ran through a thorn bush. Her blood then turned into blooming red roses wherever it touched.
Note the roses blowing in the wind in Sandro Botticelli’s masterpiece, The Birth of Venus, ca. 1485, The Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Public Domain via WikiCommons
Another legend tells the story of Flora, the Goddess of Spring and of Flowers, who one day found the dead body of her dearest and most beautiful nymph; inconsolable, she begged all the Gods to come to her aid to change the dead body of her loved one into the most beautiful flower which would be recognized as Queen of all Flowers. Apollo, God of the Arts, gave her the breath of life, Bacchus bathed her in nectar, Vertumnus gave her fragrance, Pomona fruit, and Flora herself finally gave a diadem of petals, and thus the rose was born.
According to yet another story, the God Zephyrus loved Flora so much that he changed himself into a rose because the Goddess had no interest other than flowers. When Flora saw the rose, she kissed it and thus fulfilled Zephyrus’ wish.
It is said that the word “rose” originated when Flora, the Goddess of Flowers, in pain upon being struck by Cupid’s arrow, was unable to properly pronounce the word Eros but made it sound like “ros”. From this word, “rose” becomes a synonym for Eros.
The making of rose garlands by multiple Cupids and Psyches, in a wall painting fragment from Pompeii: the Psyche on the right holds a libation bowl, a symbol of religious piety often depicted as a rosette, third quarter of 1st century, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Public Domain via WikiCommons
The rose also featured heavily in the rituals of the Roman nobility, most notably the Rosaliae signorum, a celebration of the Roman army during which the military standards are adorned with garlands of flowers. The rose festivals of ancient times are recorded in at least forty inscriptions in Latin and sixteen in Greek.
The Rosalia or Rosaria festival usually took place in May, but sometimes July, and emerged from the funerary and banqueting significance the rose played in Roman times.
Bloodless sacrifices to the gods could include rose garlands and violets as well as libations of wine. Roses were planted at some tombs and mausoleums, and adjacent grounds might be cultivated as gardens to grow roses for adornment or even to produce to sell for cemetery upkeep or administrative costs.
Floral Tribute for Venus, by 1690, Abraham Brueghel, Unidentified location, Public Domain via WikiCommons
Roses and rose water were a major sign of luxury, and as such were indispensable on occasions of conspicuous consumption.
Medievalists.net notes: “The Romans learned to love the rose after their contact with the Persians and the Middle East, though they expressed their feelings in their own characteristically extravagant way.”
Not only were there whole fountains of rose water, and not only would the floors sometimes be carpeted knee-deep with rose petals, but guests at banquets would have rose petals thrown over them. At a banquet given by Nero this rain of rose petals reached such proportions that several of the noble guests suffocated under the mass of flowers.
In a Dionysian context, wine, roses, and the color red are trappings of violence and funerals as well as amorous pursuits and revelry.
A wreathed maenad (attendant of Dionysus) holds Cupid as he extends a rose, in a wall painting from the House of Lucius Caecilius Iucundus, Pompeii, Maenad and Cupid, 1st century AD, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli
Roman nobility established large public rose gardens in the south of Rome, and newly married couples would wear rose crowns and their beds would be covered in rose petals, linking roses to love and sexual desire.
The phrase sub rosa or “under the rose,” meaning “confidentially,” also hails from age. Roman ceilings were often adorned, painted, or engraved with roses to encourage guests to keep whatever was uttered beneath them private.
Cleopatra famously carpeted the floor of her boudoir with mounds of rose petals to seduce Mark Antony.
In this much later depiction of the meeting of Antony and Cleopatra, British painter, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Cleopatra is full of luxury and seduction and Eastern cloths, roses and leopard skins, and flute girls, and a white dress so gauzy that Cleopatra’s body is clearly visible through its film. And she is very white in the westernized version. The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra, 41 B.C., 1885, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Private Collection, Public Domain via Wiki Commons.
| The Middle Ages |
During the Middle Ages, early Christian writers transferred the imagery of garlands and crowns of roses and violets to the cult of the saints, especially the Virgin Mary.
In medieval devotional verse, the Virgin Mary is often referred to as a “rose without thorns,” since she was free of original sin. In fact, the five petals of the wild rose are often equated with the five joys of Mary (the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Assumption) and the five letters in her full name, Maria.
At this time, the rose as the queen of flowers was a privileged symbol for Mary, as seen in this lyric dated 1420:
There is no rose of such virtue
As is the rose that bare Jesu;
Alleluia.
For in this rose contained was
Heaven and earth in little space;
Res Miranda.
Feast of the Rosary, 1506 Abrecht Dürer, National Gallery Prague, Public Domain via WIkiCommons. Dürer’s masterpiece, shows the Virgin Mary at the centre, enthroned and holding the Christ Child, with two flying angels holding an elaborated royal crown made of gold, pearls and gems over her. Mary is depicted handing out rose garlands to two groups of kneeling worshippers, portrayed in two symmetrical rows at the sides.
Medieval art often depicts the Virgin Mary in an enclosed rose garden – a representation of Eden, but also a place where courtly lovers could retire. The Christmas rose – a hardy white flower with five petals that blooms at Christmas time – is a symbol of the Nativity and appears in medieval carols and seasonal hymns to the Virgin.
It is said that the rose’s thorny stems were twined around Christ’s head during his Passion, and its red flowers are a symbol both of worldly love and of martyrdom, which is possibly why they have, over time, become associated with St. Valentine’s Day.
The Virgin Mary in an enclosed rose garden. The Madonna of the Rose Garden (Madonna del Roseto), c. 1425, Michelino da Besozzo, Musei Civici, Verona, Public Domain via WikiCommons
From the 12th century, rose imagery exploded across Europe with the spread of religious devotion to Mary.
The medieval rose, laden with Christian symbolism of love and sacrifice, was now such a strong religious idea that it bloomed into architecture and became incorporated into the building of Gothic churches in the form of rose windows.
The rose continued to be revered into the 13th century, where we have the major appearance of the rosary (Latin: rosarium), a set of prayer beads created as a garland of roses.
Interior of the rose window at Strasbourg Cathedral via WikiCommons
While the Christian tradition took the rose as representative of the Virgin, secular literature celebrated the rose as a symbol of earthly love and beauty.
In courtly love, for example, the rose was the iconic symbol of the beloved lady – or of the prize of her love itself – a personification that found its most exquisite representation in the 13th-century French epic poem, Le Roman de La Rose (The Romance of the Rose), a medieval illustrated allegory that documents the art of chivalric love and its many facets. Written by Guillaume de Lorris, it was completed 40 years later by Jean de Meun.
“Bel Accueil and the Lover,” Roman de la Rose, Harley 4425 f. 30v, © The British Library. | Detail of a miniature of the Lover and Bel Accueil (Fair Welcome) in the garden; Danger and other allegorical figures are hiding in the bushes.
| Tudor England |
Fast forward to the 15th century, when the House of Lancaster and the House of York crusaded to rule England in a series of bloody battles that later became known as the War of the Roses.
Framed print, "Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens" after the original 1910 fresco painting by Henry Albert Payne (British, 1868-1940) based upon a scene in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 1, where supporters of the rival factions pick either red or white roses. The original in the Palace of Westminster and a later similar painting by Payne in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, this print marked "copyright 1912 in London & Washington by "The Fine Art Publishing Co., Ltd. London", Public Domain via WikiCommons.
The House of Lancaster’s heraldic badge was a red rose and the House of York’s, a white one. In 1485, the Battle of Bosworth saw Henry Tudor, a Lancastrian, defeat King Richard III and become King Henry VII (1457-1509). His marriage to Elizabeth of York unified the rival factions and the red and white Tudor rose was born.
The rose has been the national flower of England ever since this bloody time, with the term ‘English rose’ commonly used to describe a naturally pretty brunette with porcelain-like fair skin, flushed cheeks, and pink lips.
Henry VIII made the practice of painting or carving a rose on the ceiling, in the context of sub rosa (confidential meetings in which nothing that was discussed could be repeated outside the room where the meeting had taken place), more widespread—a design which we still see today.
A Tudor Rose, created by Henry VII of England (r. 1485-1509 CE) to symbolize the unification of the Houses of York (white rose) and Lancaster (red rose) following the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487 CE). From the ceiling of Haddon Hall, Derbyshire, England. Image courtesy of World History Encyclopedia.
Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) took the rose as her emblem, clearly understanding its associations with virginity. In so doing she tied the strands of courtly love and holy virginity together in her own queenly identity.
In portraits of Elizabeth I, we sometimes also see the white eglantine rose (or sweet briar), known as the queen’s rose, alongside the family Tudor rose. The white eglantine had been cultivated before 1551 as a hedging plant in England. Although she had the ‘Tudor Rose’ as her family emblem, Elizabeth adopted the more natural ‘Eglantine’, symbolizing royalty and chastity, particularly after she had forsaken marriage in favor of ‘Marrying England’.
The Pelican Portrait, 1575, Nicholas Hilliard. The pelican was thought to nourish its young with its own blood and served to depict Elizabeth as the "mother of the Church of England". The Tudor rose can be seen in the upper left corner, while her dress is adorned with
Shakespeare (1564-1616) lived in this world filled with roses, and it is well-believed to be his favorite flower.
The word “rose” appears more than seventy times in Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, and it is the flower that he mentions the most. In Midsummer Night’s Dream, he gushes over Queen Elizabeth I’s beloved Eglantine.
“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and nodding violets grow
Quite over canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk rose and with Eglantine.”
-Wiliam Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Great Holland Rose, in The Herball or General Historie of Plantes (first published 1597) by John Gerard. Gerard was an English herbalist with a large garden in Holborn, now part of London, who practiced during the time of Shakespeare. He was supervisor to the gardens of noblemen. The Herball was immensely popular, but it may actually have been based on a translation of a work by the Flemish botanist, Rembertus Dodoens. Of the more than 1,800 woodcuts illustrating the book, only 16 were done by Gerard.
In the opening lines of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare describes his male hero as “rose-cheeked”, referencing the aforementioned Greek myth. More famously, in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet of the House of Capulet argues her case for loving Romeo, of the rival House of Montague, with the line, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”.
Notably, the rose’s conventional positive associations with love, beauty and sweetness are familiar to all and border on the cliché. Shakespeare also used the rose to convey the painful side of love and the passing of time. In Juliet's lament on love, the rose is a metaphor for the darker aspect of love.
“Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,
Too rude, to boist’rous, and it pricks like a thorn.’
Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4
Aroundout this same time, Dutch master painters were painting flowers, also with a look toward the passing of time. Flower paintings were expressions of wealth – and of the stern lesson that wealth was transient and there were more important matters to attend to.
Like, for example, this painting by Rachel Ruysch, of which Robin Powell of The Sunday Morning Herald says:
“The seasonal mash-up makes a collage of time, which along with the representation of bud, full bloom and fading flower, reminds the viewer of life's passing. These messages about life's beauty and ephemerality would have been read alongside a range of meanings associated with each of the flowers, not all of them about impending moral judgment. There's humour in that bug heading off the flat edge of the known world; love and desire – and a wink to the knowing – in the roses and carnations, which were a symbol of the wedding night in northern Europe.”
Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Tabletop, 1716, Rachel Ruysch, Public Domain via RijksMuseum, Amsterdam
| The 18th Century |
The eighteenth century saw many advances in the printing processes, allowing colors and details of drawings to appear even more accurate on paper. As interest in botanical publications increased, the role of botanical illustrator came to be considered a respected profession.
Employed as a royal flower painter by both Marie Antoinette (the last Queen of France) and the Empress, Josephine Bonaparte, French artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté was renowned for his paintings of roses, lilies, and other flowers—many of which remain popular today.
Napoleon's wife Josephine established an extensive collection of roses at Chateau de Malmaison, an estate seven miles west of Paris in the 1800s. This garden became the setting for Pierre Joseph Redoute's work as a botanical illustrator. In 1824, he completed his watercolor collection "Les Rose," which is still considered one of the finest records of botanical illustration.
Rosa bifera macrocarpa, La Quatre Saisons Lelieur, 1811, Pierre-Joseph Redouté | National Museum of Natural History, Paris, France | Public Domain via Wiki Commons
Pierre-Joseph Redoute's school of botanical drawing in the Salle Buffon in the Jardin des Plantes, 1830, Julie Ribault, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England, Public Domain via WikiCommons
It wasn't until the late eighteenth century that cultivated roses were introduced into Europe from China. Most modern-day roses can be traced back to this ancestry. These introductions were repeat bloomers, making them unusual and of great interest to hybridizers, setting the stage for breeding work with native roses to select for hardiness and a long bloom season. Many of these early efforts by plant breeders are of great interest to today's gardeners.
|The Victorian Era |
Victorians created a language for flowers, or floriography, which enabled them to express thoughts and feelings they wouldn’t be otherwise able to convey in a world where courtship had to adhere to strict rules. Each flower had its specific meaning, depending on its color, its shade of color, and arrangement with other flowers.
In this unique floral dictionary, the red rose symbolized love, passion, romance, and devotion. It was used to simply and proudly say, “I love you”, at a time when the verbal expression of such sentiments was deemed socially inappropriate.
As such, it’s the Victorian understanding of roses that most influences our modern-day interpretation of the ‘queen of flowers.”
Jane Morris: Study for “Mariana,” 1868, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Public Domain via The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Other colors of roses have their own similar, yet subtly different, meanings. Pink roses represent affection and admiration, making them a good choice for budding relationships, while white roses symbolize purity and are still popular at weddings and funerals today. Yellow roses reflect friendship. Whatever you do, steer clear of black (actually very dark red) roses, as they have a long association with death. 🥀
