art, food in of interest for the evidence in paintings of the foodstuffs and eating habits of their time. The gastronomic contents of a painting are useful material for art historians for the purposes of attribution and background information.
Paintings are sometimes the only source of information about what dishes for which we have recipes may have looked like.
Glimpses of fruit and things to eat in devotional works can tell much about the appearance and variety of things like apples, cucumbers, oranges, bread, and wine, although included for their symbolic functions. The solitary cucumber and apple in Crivelli’s Annunciation with St Egidius are real earthy products, as are the slightly blemished fruit in Caravaggio’s The Meal at Emmaus, and the glorious canopies of citrus fruits in Mantegna’s Madonna of the Victories, while the golden oranges glimmering in the background of Uccello’s Battle of San Romano
remind us of the palle, the round balls of the Medici crest, punning reminder of apothecaries’ pills and health-giving fruit. Tiepolo’s rapid little sketch The Banquet of Cleopatra conveys the bustle and paraphernalia of a courtly banquet, the servants bringing food and drink, musicians, pet dogs, entertainers, and the costly appurtenances of a table set with oriental carpet, covered by a starched, lace-trimmed cloth. The vast banquet scene by Veronese, A Feast in the House of Levi, is contemporary with the banquets described, course by course, by Bartolomeo Scappi in his monumental cookery book of 1570. Incidental details—the use of toothpicks, the serving of wine on request, the steward directing dishes to individual guests, are meat and drink to the historian.
