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• Romans carved death masks and life-sized figures out of beeswax.

• Ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Chinese, and modern Germans as late as World War I, used honey as an antiseptic for wounds during wartime.

• The Greek physician Hippocrates referred to as the father of medicine, cured skin ailments and ulcers using honey.

HONEYBEES IN ART

Reading accounts of beekeeping in ancient history is intriguing to me. In my own travels to foreign countries I have uncovered more of the history of bees and honey, as well as many examples of honeybees in artwork. On a visit to Vatican City, for instance, I discovered bees and honey depicted in marvelous paintings on crumbling stone walls and decorative patterns of honeybees adorning the inner chambers of sanctuaries. The honeybee repeatedly appears as an icon throughout Roman, Florentine, and Venetian art.

In the seventeenth century the famous sculptor Lorenzo Bernini was commissioned by Pope Urban VIII (or Urbano Barberini) to sculpt his family crest. The final sculpture, completed in 1644 in Rome, was called Fontana delle Api, or the Fountain of the Bees. The basin is in the shape of an open clamshell. Inside the shell stands the Barberini family crest, adorned with three honeybees. But why bees, you may ask? Because they symbolize diligence (the hard work of the worker bees), social organization (hierarchy within the hive), and purity (production of beeswax, the purest form of candle wax). Around the mid-1800s the fountain was dismantled, and some parts were lost. In 1915, it was restored and moved to the north side of Rome’s Piazza Barberini, where the piazza meets the Via Veneto.

At the Palazzo Barberini, I was humbled by it’s best example of honeybee art: a huge fresco, Pietro da Cortona’s masterpiece, entitled The Triumph of Divine Providence, which fills the ceiling of the grand salon. This baroque painting was begun in 1633 and was completed in 1639. It celebrates the spiritual and secular power of the Barberini family’s glory. The highly detailed painting gives the illusion of figures floating above the room and is full of various symbols, including honeybees, which bob among the figures.

In Slovenia, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, beekeeping used to be an important element in people’s lives and an important line of business. Today, the Radovljica Museum of Beekeeping in the town of Radovljica, Slovenia, boasts a fine permanent exhibition of painted beehive panels. These wooden panels depict colorful stories of the life of the honeybee and were hung on the sides of beehives. The traditional art of painting beehive panels flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries among Slovenian farmers, who at the time made up the country’s largest social class. Together with Slovenian folk songs, legends, fairy tales, and the remarkable creations of traditional Slovenian architecture, beehive panels represented this culture’s limitless abundance of folk imagination, thought, and creative expression.

HONEY IN CULINARY RECIPES

Nearly every culture uses honey in its cuisine. Here are examples—some familiar and some rare—of ways honey has been enjoyed throughout history.

AMBROSIA: In Greek mythology, the Olympian gods preserved their immortality by eating honey. It was accompanied by nectar, wine of the gods.

APICIUS ROMAN CHEESECAKE: Apicius was a first-century nobleman who has been credited with penning the very first recipes. His love of food and cuisine is reflected in his 468 recipes. Honey was one of his ten favorite ingredients and he used it as a preservative, a condiment, and an ingredient in making wine. I credit Apicius as being the first to pair cheese and honey in his recipe titled “Homemade Sweets and Honeyed Cheeses.” When he lost part of his fortune and was no longer able to dine in the style to which he had grown accustomed, Apicius committed suicide by poisoning himself. The word apicius loosely translates to the modern word epicure, referring to a gourmand.

Modern Roman Libum Recipe