Those food visuals

The previous post was all text based. Let's move on to some visual representation of food. The artist in focus is Vincenzo Campi (1536-1591). I decided to focus on Campi as a result of not being able to find much on peasants and their diets (and dealing with food) during the Renaissance. Luckily, in attempting to find the reason why these paintings were painted, I found an article, written by Sheila McTighe, titled Foods and the Body in Italian Genre Paintings, about 1580: Campi, Passarotti, Carracci. And, as we can see from the article title, lead me to a few other artists as well!
As McTighe states, the series of 5 paintings were for the patronage of the Fugger family of Augsburg, in ~1580. He also had a later unknown patron, who also requested a series of 5 paintings. Both series present fruit and fish vendors, poulterers, and the second series containing cheese eaters as well. So, let us get into his first series.

Vincenzo Campi, Fish Vendors (Photo: Jstor)

A real focus for these series of paintings is the theme they present. There are not many paintings, even writing, from this period that explain or show what or how lay people worked, or ate, their food. I understand that there is an understanding that lay people did not have the best diet and the threat of famine was a constant -- there always seems to be a sense of pity and despair. But Campi portrays the husband and wife as cheerful people and are full of life. Perhaps it was the way in which the patron asked for the figures to be presented, but we must keep in mind that lay people did thrive in some years when harvest or fishing were yielded a large amount of produce.

Vincenzo Campi, The Fruit Vendor (Photo: reproarte.com)

There's a large abundance of foodstuff in which the lay people present. I found this a tad interesting because, even if they had this large amount of food available to them, they would not be able to indulge in the food. The food is tangible evidence of their hard work on the fields and though they needed to survive, and did eat some of their product but ideally selling most of it would come first. Yet, this also brings me to ask, would they have had this much food as the result of a harvest? Some more research will have to go into this.

Vincenzo Campi, Fishmonger (Photo: bjws.blogspot.ca)

 What McTighe points out though, is that this particular theme of painting is similar to Flemish market scenes by Antwerp painters Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer. A point of interest, as McTighe also points out, is that the Italian paintings have a lack of biblical motifs in the background. Which, for me, could be seen as the Italian painters depicting the how fruitful the peninsula is and the diversity they had in the food stuff present.

Vincenzo Campi, Poulterers (Photo: ARTstor)

I also find that the paintings do well to show the dynamic of the family. In three out of the five paintings we see a child, either in the lap of the mother or aiding his mother (like in the Poulterers). Campi also presents the joy that the husband and the wife share while presenting their foodstuff. The feeling of the portraits are intimate in the way that the figures interact. The husband and wife jesting is also something that I enjoy in his paintings. Unlike some other paintings, like biblical passages, where the placement of figures are thoroughly thought about and the inclusion of patrons, or the artists themselves, give the paintings a static sense to them (at least to me they do).

Vincenzo Campi, Fish Vendors (Photo: Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art)

With these paintings, Campi captures a moment of time, a simple snapshot, of people enjoying moments from their daily lives. The background, as mentioned above, is may not be biblical in meaning but what comes to mind is a sense of these lay people being immersed in nature. Their lives are constantly surrounded by nature, be it growing the animals or ploughing and sowing the fields. Their lives are dependent on what nature gives them in exchange for their hard work. 

This post is getting a little long so I will pick up Campi's second series, commissioned by an unknown patron, in the following post to come! Stay tuned!

McTighe, Sheila. "Foods and the Body in Italian Genre Paintings, about 1580s: Campi, Passarotti, Carracci." The Art Bulletin 86.2 (2004): 301-323. JSTOR. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.

The Court of Ferrara (1529)

Let's jump right into the Renaissance dining and the court of Ferrara! For this particular court feast, we will be aided by John Dickie and a section of his book Delizia!: The Epic History of the Italians and Their Food. The feast that took place in 1529, was recorded in extreme detail by the court administrator and steward to the Dukes of Ferrara, Cristoforo da Messisbugo (79). The feast was to celebrate a crucial rite of passage for Alfonso I, the Duke of Ferrara (80). What Dickie notes for this feast is the overindulgence of food and just the simple sense of excess. A sense of excess that is still overdone, even if the number of guests reaches 104! What I found extremely interesting about this section of Dickie's book, is the amount of detail taken to record not only the amount of dishes made, but details on how each dish was prepared.

Ah, but first I think it would do well to understand the structure of a traditional Italian meal before we get to the number of courses throughout the feast. Messisbugo has a starter and four courses written down (five courses total!). This may seem as a substantial amount of food, but it is not so much considering how the Italians structured their meals.

• The Antipasto: something small to nibble on before the actual meal
• The Primo (or Primi Piatti): usually consist of starches, like pasta or risotto or so
• The Secondo (or Secondi Piatti): the main meat of the course, ranging from fish to lamb or pork or beef
• The Contorno: a side dish of vegetables that compliments the main meat dish, tends to bring out the simplistic flavours of the vegetables
• The Dolce: a sweet or dessert that ends off the meal

Yet we must keep in mind, the feast at Ferrara does not display how all the courts throughout the city-states of Italy dined on feast days, or on any given day. As Dickie mentions, "grand court dinners offered the chance for a steward, as well as his master, to put all his capabilities on show" (80). And so, "Messisbugo's meal was given its real savor by a mix of power and spectacle" (80). As such, we can grasp a better understanding of why Messisbugo went to such great lengths to present the guests with all these lavish dishes. The feast not only allowed Messisbugo to parade the wealth, and power, of his Duke but to also show how well off the city-state of Ferrara was as a whole.

It would be too much to put the entirety of the menu up onto this one post, but I will show a dish or two from each course. And, as you will see, just a few examples will show the extravagance of such a grand feast!

STARTERS
104 small cream pies dusted with sugar
15 large salted eels, in 104 cylindrical cuts. 25 plates
       Eels were the king of Italian fish in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. They could be kept alive a long time in freshwater reservoirs in the cities, and responded well to salting and smoking.
50 large, skinned, smoked grey mullet in 25 pies with sweet sauce

FIRST COURSE
104 quails. 104 tomaselle. 104 roasted capon lives in caul. With accompaniments. 25 plates
       Tomaselle were liver rissoles made with raisins, sugar, bone marrow, spices, and hard cheese, then wrapped in caul or omentum -- a double folded fatty membrane from an animal's lower abdomen that was often used as sausage skin
52 roast pheasant with 100 oranges in segments. 25 plates.

SECOND COURSE - Dickie makes a note of how the dishes begin to increase with sophistication (89)
25 fried white sausages. 104 fried sweetbreads, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. 25 plates.
       Cervalleti (white sausages) contained a stuffing of milk, egg whites, fatty cheese, starch, sugar, raisins, cinnamon, and pepper. They were boiled and then fried in fat. 
257 large pigeons in puff pastry. 25 plates.
104 friend Lake Garda trout, sprinkled with sesame seeds. 

THIRD COURSE
104 roast, boned partridges in a "royal sauce" of sugar, vinegar, and spices. 25 plates.
23 rabbits. 104 doves. Thickly sliced large yellow sausages. 25 plates.
      The yellow sausages were made with pork, Piacenza cheese (a variety of Parmesan) and spices. About eleven pounds of sausage were divided between the 25 plates. 
25 plates of large, fresh, roasted eel with sugar and cinnamon.

FOURTH COURSE
150 large fried pilchards covered with orange slices and sugar. 25 plates.
25 bean tarts
       The filling was a pulp of beans, hard cheese, butter, sugar, cinnamon, pepper, ginger, and egg. In this case the tart was made to look like a pie by adding a caul "lid."
104 fried marzipan pastries filled with Turkish-style rice
       Cooking rice Turkish-style involved simmering it in cow's milk and sugar with butter and a little rose water. More sugar was added at the end.

Now, these were three examples in each course that had roughly six-eight dishes per course. How indulgent!
I also want to bring the use of sugar to our attention. I do not have a source for this fact, I'll see if I can add a source later on but! Sugar was an imported good and it was quite costly. A way that people showed wealth was by the amount of sugar they had to use as well! Neat, eh?




Dickie, John. Delizia!: The Epic History of the Italians and Their Food. New York: Free Press, 2008. pp.77-99. Print.

"Anatomy of an Italian Meal." Huffpost Taste. 2 June 2013. The Huffington Post. Web. 26 Nov. 2015.

Introductory post!

WELCOME - BENVENUTO! 

This particular blog will centre around food during the Italian Renaissance (13th century - 16th century), how food differed between the classes and how it was portrayed in both art and literature. There is no set argument about food in this blog, but perhaps one will pop up during my research and as I update the blog. I will supply my discussion with articles by scholars on Renaissance food -- each source will be cited at the end of every post. As well as (hopefully!), some primary sources of the time. If I can find some recipes, perhaps I will try them at home and have a post or two around that as well. The question will then be, will I appreciate the taste of the time as I do the art and history?




Botticelli, Sandro. Marriage Feast of Nastagio degli Onesti. 1482-1483. ARTstor. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.