14: Banquets and Books
Banquets and banquet culture
Communal meals: monasteries (refectory, dining hall)
Andrea del Castagno, Last Supper (1445-50), Museo di Cenacolo di Sant’Apollonia, Florence
Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican
Late Middle Ages: from manor house to chateau
Chateau de Chambord (Loire), begun 1519 (Francis I)
Ancient models: Roman and Greek banquets: Ficino and Plato’s Symposium
Renaissance Rome: the households, Palazzi and villas of the papacy, cardinals and other elites
Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican
London: The Banqueting House (Whitehall), Inigo Jones (1619)
The Spanish triumphal arch (front), 1599 . Triumphal Gate decorated with a representation of king Philip II between his children, for the entrance of Archduke Albert and Isabella of Austria into Antwerp. Historica narratio profectionis et inaugurationis serenissimorum Belgii principum Alberti et Isabellae Austriae archiducum, 1599.
From: The Triumphs of Maximilian, ca 1512
floating castle from the Entry of Henry II into Lyon, 1547; included dinner
Masque: dancers in costume, Florence, 1589 (Buontalenti)
Festival Book: 1589, Wedding in Florence of Ferdinando de’Medici and Christine of Lorraine
17th century and beyond: commercial performances
Scappi and Visual Evidence
Book as a source:
- recipes
- menus
- events
- images
Households: the Roman familia
- Household staff
- professional staff
- guests
- size: from ca 20-ca 200
Building itself and kitchen location: cellar, separate wing or building
General sources of information: building; artifacts; account books; diaries; inventories; tax records
Visual evidence and interpretation
examples: natural history of plants and animals
Tradition: Dioscorides
Leonhard Fuchs, De historia stirpium, 1542: prunus
John James Audubon, Birds of America: Red-headed woodpecker
Vincenzo Campi: the Kitchen (1590), Brera
Pieter Aertsen, Meat Stall with Holy Family Giving Alms
Georgius Agricola De re metallica
