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VISUALIZING CULINARY CULTURE
AT THE MEDICI AND FARNESE COURTS
by
Kate Heckmann Hanson
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ART HISTORY)
August 2010
Copyright 2010 Kate Heckmann Hanson
Object Description
| Title | Visualizing culinary culture at the Medici and Farnese courts |
| Author | Hanson, Kate Heckmann |
| Author email | heckmann@usc.edu; kateheckmann@gmail.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Art History |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2010-06-04 |
| Date submitted | 2010 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2010-08-06 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Howe, Eunice |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Rosenthal, Margaret F. Bleichmar, Daniela |
| Abstract | Gastronomy has traditionally been viewed as a product of early modern court life, but I argue for a more nuanced relationship in which the representations of culinary culture in print or painting ensured its cultural centrality. The producers and consumers of culinary imagery performed complementary roles that assured the importance of a sophisticated and theatrical cuisine for sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian courts. Preparing, presenting, and consuming elaborate meals were not only deeply ritualized activities but also created and affirmed political, diplomatic, and personal hierarchies and allegiances. Early modern Italy experienced a surge in professionalized culinary activity as cooks, stewards, carvers, and other domestic officials refined their craft, published their work in books such as Bartolomeo Scappi’s "Opera" (Rome, 1570) and Mattia Giegher’s "Li tre trattati" (Padua, 1639), and fashioned a market for their expertise in the courtly milieu. My studies of the “period appetite” at the seventeenth-century Medici and Farnese courts demonstrate how culinary practices in Florence and Parma were informed and shaped by the collecting of kitchen equipment, culinary treatises, and idealized paintings of edible goods by Giovanna Garzoni and Felice Boselli. By putting illustrated books and archival material in conversation with watercolor and oil still life paintings housed in rural villas, this dissertation argues for the necessity of crossing disciplinary boundaries to understand the histories of art, collecting, and food. The producers of these textual and visual records—cooks, stewards, and artists—performed the culinary culture of their elite patrons through detailed cooking treatises, lavish manuscripts, and series of bountiful still life paintings. In so doing, they actively shaped an idealized food culture specific to their courtly and regional environs.; Early modern alimentary practices—including the processes of understanding, selecting, organizing, butchering, cooking, and presenting foods—shared ideological links with contemporary medicine, alchemy, and botany as they mediated between nature and man. This historicized study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culinary culture demonstrates that illustrated books and paintings of edible goods should be understood as constructed fictions offering reassuring visions of a hierarchical, lavish, and orderly gastronomic culture to their patrons in Florence and Parma. The elevation of food and dining was essential to the structure and functions of the Medici and Farnese courts and the recording of these gastronomic practices in print and painting played a key role in constructing and enacting ducal dominance over politics, culture, and nature. |
| Keyword | early modern; Italy; still life painting; food; banquet; Florence; Parma; print; Scappi, Bartolomeo; Giegher, Mattia; Garzoni, Giovanna; Boselli, Felice |
| Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Florence; Parma |
| Geographic subject (country) | Italy |
| Coverage era | Sixteenth Century; Seventeenth Century |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m3315 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Hanson, Kate Heckmann |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@dots.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-Hanson-3855 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume44/etd-Hanson-3855.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@dots.usc.edu |
| Full text | VISUALIZING CULINARY CULTURE AT THE MEDICI AND FARNESE COURTS by Kate Heckmann Hanson A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (ART HISTORY) August 2010 Copyright 2010 Kate Heckmann Hanson |
