Visualizing culinary culture at the Medici and Farnese courts

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Content 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 ii Acknowledgments Like the preparation and execution of an elaborate Renaissance banquet, this dissertation could not have come into fruition without the generous assistance of many people. My advisor Eunice Howe, who I admire greatly, has consistently provided a model of scholarly rigor and innovative thinking. I thank her for her unflagging support, patience, and kindness. I am grateful to Tita Rosenthal for her careful reading of my work and for encouraging me to consider the broader implications of my project. Daniela Bleichmar’s critical suggestions have pushed this dissertation in new directions and opened up new lines of inquiry for my scholarly thinking, and I am appreciative of her enthusiasm. The intellectual engagement and generosity of my committee will continue to shape me as a scholar. I thank Sean Roberts for his helpful comments on early drafts of this dissertation and for his excellent advice. I am grateful to Peter Mancall of the EMSI for his unwavering enthusiasm in supporting students of early modern studies at USC. Other professors at USC and elsewhere who have provided key assistance include: Malcolm Baker, Luigi Ballerini, Lisa Bitel, Diane Ghirardo, Sheryl Reiss, and Joanna Woods- Marsden. At the University of Michigan, I thank Pat Simons for her willingness to share her ideas about Renaissance kitchens and her generosity. Ken Albala and Gillian Riley graciously imparted their seemingly boundless expertise of food culture and history and offered concrete suggestions. I would like to thank everyone in the USC Art History Department for facilitating my graduate work. This project would have not been possible without iii grants and fellowships from the Art History Department and the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute. A Samuel H. Kress Foundation Travel Fellowship generously funded a research trip to Italy in 2007. I would also like to thank the archivists and librarians who helped me successfully navigate the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Kunsthistoriches Institut, Archivio di Stato di Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Biblioteca Gastronomica at Academia Barilla, Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, Wellcome Library, and Getty Research Institute. I am appreciative of the opportunity I was given to present portions of my dissertation in progress at the conference “Reading and Writing Recipe Books, 1600- 1800” at the University of Warwick and in the “Writing about Food in Renaissance Italy,” panel at the 2009 Renaissance Society of America annual meeting. My work was greatly enriched by the conversations and other presentations at both. Before embarking on archival research I had the pleasure of participating in a Mellon Summer Institute in Italian Paleography at the Getty Research Institute, led by Maddalena Signorini, and I thank her and my colleagues in this seminar for their combined expertise. In particular, Valerie Taylor has been a font of information, a generous collaborator, and a friend. During research trips to Italy, Sarah Cree, Erica Westhoff, and Valentina Torresi provided intellectual support and companionship. My graduate student colleagues at USC never fail to inspire me, and I am grateful to Priyanka Basu, Nora Lawrence, Aleca LeBlanc, Amy Von Lintel, Leta Ming, and Kris Tanton. Rachel Middleman has cheerfully and painstakingly edited iv every word (and comma) of this dissertation and I will always be glad to celebrate accomplishments with her. Sandra Zalman is a model art historian and great friend— Texas is lucky to have her. Many other friends have provided moral support and camaraderie, especially Simrin Mangat in Los Angeles and Anna Sampson and Dan Herbert in Ann Arbor. Thanks to Bella and Nick Roe, with whom I have shared many good times, for hosting me in London. Elia Nichols is a dear friend, and I treasure the months we spent together in Florence. I would also like to thank Katie Comer, Jordan Fiorillo, Michelle Joffe, Andrea Kahn, Rachel and Spencer Klotzman, Rebecca Medina, Ted Rubenstein, and Erin and Seth Stanton. I am grateful to all my family, including the Bissells, Hansons, Hanson-Jerrards, Hams, and Heltzels, whose encouragement means the world. Without the love and support of my late grandparents, Pearl and Carl Heckmann and Anne and Jim Winterringer, my education would not have been possible. My brother Will Heckmann has kept me sane with his good spirits and unflagging support. Finally, my wonderful parents, Susan and Mark Heckmann, have been my biggest champions. I thank them for their steadfast support and excitement for all my endeavors and dedicate this dissertation to them. Words fail to express the gratitude and love I have for my best friend, editor, ally, and husband, Chris Hanson, who always inspires me. v Table of Contents Acknowledgments ii List of Figures vi Abbreviations xv Abstract xvi Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Culinary Practices at Court 54 Chapter 2: Constructing Culinary Knowledge in Image and Text 99 Chapter 3: Nature and Food in Still Life: Giovanna Garzoni’s Hybrid 180 Studies for the Medici Chapter 4: Collecting Culinary Culture in the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza 263 Conclusion 347 Bibliography 353 Appendices Appendix A: Selected treatises printed in Italy 1400-1700, 387 organized by genre and date Appendix B: Glossary of terms related to court culinary practices 392 Appendix C: Excerpt from ASF, GM, 1463, registro 3 394 Appendix D: Excerpt from ASP, CCF, serie VIII, busta 52, fasc. 6 396 Appendix E: Excerpt from ASF, GM, 1429 397 Appendix F: Excerpt from ASF, GM, 466 399 Appendix G: Excerpt from ASP, CFPP, busta 250 404 vi List of Figures Figure 1: Can of Del Monte 100 Calorie Pear Halves (“Bartlett pears in 48 naturally & artificially sweetened extra light syrup”) Figure 2: Pere, Woodcut from Cesare Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice, 49 1684) Figure 3: Giovanna Garzoni, Blue bowl with strawberries, pears and 50 grasshopper eating wheat grains, between c.1641-52, [from a series of 20] Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina Figure 4: Felice Boselli, Giovanetto, funghi, frutti, pesci, piccioni, 1699, 51 [from a series of 6] Soragna, Rocca di Soragna, collection of Prince B. Meli Lupi Figure 5: Frutti, Engraving from Mattias Giegher, Li tre Trattati (Padua, 52 1639) Figure 6: Agostino Stringa, Natura morta con scatola di ''Chioccolata 53 Fina,” second half of the 17th century, Modena, Museo Civico d'Arte Figure 1.1: Matteo Greuter, Convito, engraving from Camillo Rinuccini, 93 Descrizione delle feste fatte nelle reali nozze de' Serenissimi principi di Toscana d. Cosimo de' Medici, e Maria Maddalena arcidvchessa d'Avstria (Florence: i Giunti, 1608). Unfolded from book with detail. Getty Research Institute, Special Collections ID# 2561-189 Figure 1.2: Detail, Matteo Greuter, Convito, engraving from Camillo 94 Rinuccini, Descrizione delle feste fatte nelle reali nozze de' Serenissimi principi di Toscana d. Cosimo de' Medici, e Maria Maddalena arcidvchessa d'Avstria (Florence: i Giunti, 1608). Getty Research Institute, Special Collections ID# 2561-189 Figure 1.3: Drawing depicting a banquet, with Ottavio Farnese, 16 th century. 95 Archivio di Stato di Parma, Mappe e disegni, No. 66/310 Figure 1.4: Knife, fork and spoon, Silver and rock crystal, Venice, 16 th 96 century, Museo Correr, Musei Civici Veneziani, Venice vii Figure 1.5: Drawings for a series of dinner plates designed for Odoardo 97 Farnese (1612–1640) in preparation for a meal with Cardinals Antonio and Francesco Barberini from Rome, 1639, Parma, Biblioteca Palatina Figure 1.6: Pastry cutter, Iron, Italian, 17 th century, Victoria and Albert 98 Museum, London Figure 2.1: Vincenzo Cervio, Il trinciante (Venice: Alessandro Vecchi, 144 1622) Figure 2.2: Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice: Alessandro Vecchi, 1622) 145 Figure 2.3: Frontispiece portrait, Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 146 1570) Figure 2.4: Frontispiece portrait, Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 147 1639) Figure 2.5: Frontispiece portrait, Giovanni Battista Crisci, Lucerna de 148 corteggiani (Naples, 1634) Figure 2.6: Frontispiece portrait, Antonio Latini, Lo scalco alla moderna 149 (Naples: Parrino e Mutii, 1692) Figure 2.7: Title page, Giovanni Battista Crisci, Lucerna de corteggiani 150 (Naples, 1634) Figure 2.8: Woodcut from later edition of Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera 151 Figure 2.9: Woodcut from Cristoforo da Messisbugo, Banchetti, 152 compositioni di vivande, et apparecchio generale (Ferrara, 1549) Figure 2.10: Woodcut from Cristoforo da Messisbugo, Banchetti, 153 compositioni di vivande, et apparecchio generale, ... (Ferrara, 1549) Figure 2.11: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 154 Figure 2.12: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 155 Figure 2.13: Engravings from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 156 Figure 2.14: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 157 viii Figure 2.15: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 158 Figure 2.16: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 159 Figure 2.17: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 160 Figure 2.18: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 161 Figure 2.19: Woodcuts from Agostino Gallo, Le vinti giornate 162 dell'agricoltura, et de' piaceri della villa (Venice, 1622) Figure 2.20: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 163 Figure 2.21: Engraving from Marx Rumpolt, Ein new Kochbuch 164 (Frankfurt, 1581) Figure 2.22: Woodcuts from Vincenzo Cervio, Il trinciante (Rome, 1593) 165 Figure 2.23: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 166 Figure 2.24: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 167 Figure 2.25: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 168 Figure 2.26: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 169 Figure 2.27: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 170 Figure 2.28: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 171 Figure 2.29: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 172 Figure 2.30: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 173 Figure 2.31: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 174 Figure 2.32: Engravings from Giulio Casseri, De vocis auditusque organis 175 historia anatomica (Ferrara, 1600-01) Figure 2.33: Engraving from Giovanni Battista Ferraro, Trattato vtile, e 176 necessario ad ogni agricoltore (Naples, 1602) Figure 2.32: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 177 ix Figure 2.33: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 178 Figure 2.34: Engravings from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 179 Figure 2.35: Engravings from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 180 Figure 2.36: Engravings from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 181 Figure 3.1: Giovanna Garzoni, Dog with Sweet Biscuits and a Cup, 228 1642-51 Figure 3.2: Back matter of Ricettario Fiorentino (Florence, 1623 and 1670) 229 Figure 3.3: Title page of Ricettario Fiorentino (Florence, 1670) 230 Figure 3.4: Jacopo Ligozzi, Anemones (Watercolor) Florence, Gabinetto 231 Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi Figure 3.5: Giovanna Garzoni, Ranunculus with Two Almonds and a 232 European Carpenter Bee (Gouache on vellum) Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi Figure 3.6: Giovanna Garzoni, Open pomegranate in a dish, with 233 grasshoppers, snail, and two cherries (Gouache on parchment, 27 x 35 cm.) Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina Figure 3.7: Engraving from Francesceo Stelluti, Persio tradotto in verso 234 sciolto e dichiarato da Francesco Stelluti, Accademico Linceo da Fabriano (Rome, 1630) Figure 3.8: Woodcut portraits of Henrich Fullmaurer (illustrator), Albert 235 Meyer (illustrator), and Veit Rudolf Speckle (engraver), from Leonhard Fuchs, De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (Basel, 1542) Figure 3.9: Woodcut from from Leonhard Fuchs, De historia stirpium 236 commentarii insignes (Basel, 1542) Figure 3.10: Woodcuts from Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i 237 sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) Figure 3.11: Page from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice, 1636) 238 x Figure 3.12: Detail of woodcuts from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo 239 (Venice, 1636) Figure 3.13: Giovanna Garzoni, Beans in a dish (Gouache on parchment, 240 24.5 x 34.5 cm) Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina Figure 3.14: Giovanna Garzoni, Blue bowl with strawberries, pears and 241 grasshopper eating wheat grains (Gouache on parchment, 25 x 35 cm.) Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina Figure 3.15: Giovanna Garzoni, Pears, grapes and snail (Gouache on 242 parchment, 24.5 x 32.5 cm.) Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina Figure 3.16: Page from Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i sei libri 243 della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) Figure 3.17: Detail of woodcut, Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i 244 sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) Figure 3.18: Page from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice, 1636) 245 Figure 3.19: Detail of woodcut from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo 246 (Venice, 1636) Figure 3.20: Giovanna Garzoni, Figs in a Chinese bowl, with cherries 247 and a goldfinch (Gouache on parchment, 26 x 38 cm.) Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina Figure 3.21: Engraving from Paolo Boccone, Icones & descriptiones 248 rariorum plantarum Siciliæ, Melitæ, Galliæ, & Italiæ (Oxford, 1674) Figure 3.22: Page from Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i sei libri 249 della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) Figure 3.23: Detail of woodcut, Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i 250 sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) Figure 3.24: Page from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice, 1636) 251 xi Figure 3.25: Detail of woodcut from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo 252 (Venice, 1636) Figure 3.26: Engraving from Giovanni Pietro Olina, Uccelliera, overo, 253 Discorso della natura e proprietà di diversi uccelli (Rome, 1622) Figure 3.27: Giovanna Garzoni, Melon with a slice of watermelon (Gouache 254 on parchment, 23 x 37.5 cm.) Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina Figure 3.28: Page from Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i sei libri 255 della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) Figure 3.29: Detail of woodcut, Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i 256 sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) Figure 3.30: Page from Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i sei libri 257 della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) Figure 3.31: Detail of woodcut, Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i 258 sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) Figure 3.32: Page from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice, 1636) 259 Figure 3.33: Detail of woodcut from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo 260 (Venice, 1636) Figure 3.34: Giovanna Garzoni, The old man of Artimino (Gouache on 261 parchment, 38.2 x 60 cm.) Florence, Palazzo Pitti Galleria Palatina Figure 3.35: Plate with melon, grapes, and a snail (Gouache on parchment, 262 35.5 x 49.5 cm.) Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina Figure 4.1: Felice Boselli, Natura morta con mezzina di maiale, pecore, 310 cacciagone ecc., c.1690, Fontanellato, Museo Civico Sanvitale Figure 4.2: Joachim Beuckelaer, Fish Market, 1569, Naples, Museo di 311 Capodimonte Figure 4.3: Felice Boselli, Self-portrait, c. 1710, Florence, Galleria degli 312 Uffizi xii Figure 4.4: Felice Boselli, Self-portrait, c. 1720, Parma, Galleria 313 Nazionale Figure 4.5: Felice Boselli, Angolo di dispensa con pollame e verdure, 314 1680-90, Brescia, private collection Figure 4.6: Felice Boselli, Angolo di dispensa con pane, formaggio, 315 funghi, verdure e ciliegie, 1680-90, Brescia, private collection (82 x 100 cm.) Figure 4.7: San Lucio Protettore dell’arte de lardaroli là di cui festa si 316 celebra alli XII di luglio, engraving, Archivio di Stato di Parma (82 x 100 cm.) Figure 4.8: Felice Boselli (possibly the in workshop of Bartolomeo 317 Arbotori), Natura morta con verdura e selvaggina, 1650- 1732, Parma, Pinacoteca Stuard Figure 4.9: Felice Boselli, Gatto sopra uno storione, porcellani 318 d”india, picchio, allocco, anguille e verdure, c.1690 (165 x 220 cm.) Figure 4.10: Felice Boselli, Macelleria, 1690-1700, Bergamo, private 319 collection (93 x 147 cm.) Figure 4.11: Engravings from Mattias Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 320 1639), Getty Research Institute, ID number: 1561-566 Figure 4.12: Engravings from Mattias Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 321 1639), Getty Research Institute, ID number: 1561-566 Figure 4.13: Felice Boselli, Quarto di vitello, funghi, sporta e utensili 322 domestici, 1690-1700, Bergamo, Galleria Lorenzelli Figure 4.14: Felice Boselli, Macelleria, 1720-30 323 Figure 4.15: Title page, Carlo Nascia, Li quattro banchetti (1681), 324 Biblioteca Palatina. MS PR 3818 Figure 4.16: Table of Contents, Carlo Nascia, Li quattro banchetti 325 (1681), Biblioteca Palatina. MS PR 3818 xiii Figure 4.17: Title page, Antonio Maria Dalli, Piciol lume di 326 cucina con quale ogn’uno dar potrà molto splendore ad ogni Pranso (1701), Biblioteca Palatina MS PR 233 Figure 4.18: Dedication, Antonio Maria Dalli, Piciol lume di cucina 327 con quale ogn’uno dar potrà molto splendore ad ogni Pranso (1701), Biblioteca Palatina MS PR 233 Figure 4.19: Table of Contents, Antonio Maria Dalli, Piciol lume di 328 cucina con quale ogn’uno dar potrà molto splendore ad ogni Pranso (1701), Biblioteca Palatina MS PR 233 Figure 4.20: Fontanellato, La Rocca Sanvitale, Museo Civico Sanvitale 329 Figure 4.21: Photo of current museum display with Felice Boselli works, 330 dining room, Fontanellato, La Rocca Sanvitale, Museo Civico Sanvitale Figure 4.22: Photo of current museum display with Felice Boselli works, 331 billiard room, Fontanellato, La Rocca Sanvitale, Museo Civico Sanvitale Figure 4.23: Frescoes above two doors off the second floor, exterior 332 Fontanellato, La Rocca Sanvitale, Museo Civico Sanvitale Figure 4.24: Felice Boselli, Natura morta con pesci, canestro di pane, 333 verdure ecc., c.1690, Fontanellato, Museo Civico Sanvitale Figure 4.25: Felice Boselli, Natura morta di magro con cani, gatti e 334 merluzzi, c.1690, Fontanellato, Museo Civico Sanvitale Figure 4.26: Felice Boselli, Mezzina di montone appesa e gatto che ruba 335 un’oca spennata, c.1690, Fontanellato, Museo Civico Sanvitale Figure 4.27: Felice Boselli, Natura morta con mezzina di maiale, pecore, 336 cacciagone ecc., c. 1690, Fontanellato, Museo Civico Sanvitale Figure 4.28: Title page of Eugenio Raimondi, Delle caccie (Naples, 1626). 337 Engravings by Nicolas Perrey. Figure 4.29: Engraving from Eugenio Raimondi, Delle caccie (Naples, 338 1626). Engravings by Nicolas Perrey. xiv Figure 4.30: Grande Galleria with banquet fresco by Ferdinando and 339 Francesco Galli Bibbiena, Rocca di Soragna Figure 4.31: Felice Boselli, Giovanetto, funghi, frutti, pesci, piccioni 340 and Vecchio e fanciulla che osservano una tartaruga e dei pesci, 1699, Soragna, Rocca di Soragna, collection of Prince B. Meli Lupi Figure 4.32: Felice Boselli, Uomo che sta esaminando dei pesci di mare 341 and Uomo con turbante che esamina dei pesci e della cacciagione, 1699, Soragna, Rocca di Soragna, collection of Prince B. Meli Lupi Figure 4.33: Felice Boselli, Giovane cacciatore con selvaggina and 342 Vecchio con selvaggina, pesci e frutti, 1699, Soragna, Rocca di Soragna, collection of Prince B. Meli Lupi Figure 4.34: Photo of current museum display with four Felice Boselli 343 works, Dining Room, Rocca di Soragna Figure 4.35: Felice Boselli, Due putti che bisticciano; testa di bue 344 scuoiata e selvaggina and Vecchio e ragazza con cacciagone, 1708, Soragna, Rocca di Soragna, collection of Prince B. Meli Lupi Figure 4.36: Felice Boselli, Ortolana and Donna e bambino che 345 imboccano un’anitra, 1708, Soragna, Rocca di Soragna, collection of Prince B. Meli Lupi Figure 4.37: Felice Boselli, Pesci, Un vecchio porge a un giovane un 346 granchio and Pescatore con squalo e aragosta, 1708, Soragna, Rocca di Soragna, collection of Prince B. Meli Lupi xv Abbreviations ASF Archivio di Stato di Firenze GM Guardaroba Medicea MM Miscellanea Medicea ASN Archivio di Stato di Napoli ASP Archivio di Stato di Parma CCF Casa e Corte Farnesiana CFPP Computista Farnesiana di Parma e Piacenza FS Fondo Sanvitale BPP Biblioteca Palatina di Parma BNCF Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze BNN Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli GRI Getty Research Institute, Special Collections xvi 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, xvii 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. 1 Introduction Twenty-first century Americans have long been accustomed to industrial processes of food preservation and production. The majority of the population is able to consume fruits such as pears year-round as they are shipped from other countries and climates and thus constantly available in supermarkets. Many people might more frequently eat sweetened, cooked pears from a shelf-stable can than the raw fruit (Figure 1). The peeled, de-seeded and de-stemmed pears cooked in syrup that emerge from an opened aluminum container would seem utterly foreign to another culture’s concept of “pear.” On this particular can (manufactured by Del Monte), the label touts a calorie count against a backdrop of unblemished, shining pears, one of which is cut open and shown without seeds or stems. Rays of light allude to the sun but instead burst from the manufacturer and processor’s logo. The mass production of foodstuffs in twentieth- and twenty-first-century America created a food culture largely dependent on processed and packed foods divorced from their origins. Industrialized agriculture has introduced crops that have most likely been genetically, chemically, or otherwise modified. However, visual representations of food continue to signal prized qualities of freshness or flavor by alluding to pastoral, nostalgic farms and agriculture. Though food and water remain biologically necessary for human existence, the specific meanings and associations of foodstuffs and the rituals of eating and preparation differ dramatically throughout time and place. Images of foods might seem immediate or universal, but this dissertation argues for the cultural construction of these 2 representations. The pear signaled on the Del Monte can label is one that conforms to American society’s desires for weight control and convenience. However, elite sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italians executed and collected extraordinarily different iterations of pears in print and painting, and, as this dissertation will argue, such illustrations both shape and are shaped by the particular societies that produced them. Tracing several representations of pears from early modern Italy demonstrates several ideals from its culinary culture that linked diet to health, medicine, and aesthetic pleasure. Castore Durante’s Herbario nuovo (Venice, 1684), a catalog of herbs, plants, fruits, and vegetables, compiled basic information about each plant alongside a woodcut (Figure 2). 1 1 Castore Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice: Hertz, 1684). First published in Rome, 1585. For the entry on pears, the image shows a branch of a flowering and fruiting pear tree before moving on to give the Greek, Latin, Italian, and Arabic names for a pear along with botanical, descriptive, medical, and culinary information for the fruit. Durante provides the exact humoral breakdown for a pear: “it is cold in the first degree, and dry in the second.” He gives medical advice for the flesh and seeds of the fruit (the seeds are helpful for the lungs, but damaging to the kidneys) and indicates that pears should be eaten before other foods to prevent gas. The text notes that the burned wood of the pear tree is a powerful antidote for poisonous wild mushrooms and also recommends culinary applications: making pear wine, cooking pears, and drying the fruit for winter enjoyment. This description shows that Durante’s understanding of the pear focused in large part on its medicinal or restorative effects on the body; it also 3 demonstrates that the pear is valued not only for the meat of its fruit but also for the uses of tree on which it grows and the seeds that it encapsulates. In seventeenth-century painting, the pear was a common subject in still lifes. Court artists Giovanna Garzoni and Felice Boselli (who will be studied in depth in this dissertation) both depicted pears in their compositions (Figures 3 and 4). Garzoni’s tiny pears echo the overall miniature scale of her watercolor painting created for a Medici villa whose gardens cultivated hundreds of varieties of pears. The vellum panel, created in the 1640s and displayed alongside nineteen similar works, embraces botanical accuracy in the strawberries, grasshopper, and pears but the shifts in scale between the insect and the fruits alert us to a more nuanced vision. The piece presents idealized specimens that appealed to her patrons’ interests in botany, natural history, gardening, and food-related puns. Larger pears fill a basket on the left side of Felice Boselli’s 1699 work, which was made for the aristocratic Meli Lupi family in Soragna and likely displayed in a dining room. Rather than the individualized specimens of Garzoni’s painting, the overflowing basket of pears is almost lost in a busy arrangement of fish, pigeons, mushrooms, and a large crab. The bulbous pear shapes echo the mushroom stems and rounded shells in the composition. Garzoni and Boselli’s inclusion of fresh pears in paintings of foodstuffs intended for aristocratic villas signals the fruit’s esteem in a courtly culinary culture, as well as the artists’ desire to blend accuracy with aestheticism. In 1639, domestic steward Mattias Giegher published an engraving demonstrating several ways to decoratively slice and sculpt apples and pears in his Li 4 tre trattati, a book that gave instructions for meat carving and napkin folding (Figure 5). 2 To make pears out of braised sturgeon flesh. According to the image, a two-pronged fork and a slender knife could be used to create zigzag spiral patterns and with these cuts, a pear could be transformed into a swan—and the decorative carving and fashioning of the pear indicates a culinary culture that appreciated the whimsical, detailed presentation of raw fruits. This tendency is further corroborated by Bartolomeo Scappi’s sixteenth-century recipe describing a dish of sturgeon shaped into pears: Get the same mixture as in the preceding recipe for tommacelle [Ten pounds of a skinned sturgeon, partly from the back and partly from the belly. On a table beat it small with a knife, adding in four pounds of desalted tuna belly, mint, sweet marjoram, a little wild thyme, three ounces of pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg ground together, six ounces of finely ground sugar, a pound of clean currants and ten ounces of raw roe from the sturgeon itself] and with the palm of your hand make little pear-shaped balls of it with a little stem on top so they look like pears. Flour them and put them in a baking dish or tourte pan in which there is enough oil or butter for the pears. Give them a little heat above and below until they have firmed up. Remove the excess oil or butter and put in enough water and verjuice to cover them, along with pepper, cinnamon and saffron. Boil them for half an hour, adding in a handful of beaten herbs and a little must syrup or sugar. Serve them hot with their broth over them. 3 The range of significations for pears across late Renaissance text and image is vast; however, to productively examine them, assumptions about a pear must be understood as mediated by its representations. This exploration of images and references to pears in seventeenth-century Italy highlights several guiding questions of this dissertation. 2 Mattias Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1629; Reprint, Reprint: Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1989), n.p. First published in Padua, 1629. 3 Bartolomeo Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570), trans. Terence Scully (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 282. The first edition was Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice: Michele Tramezzino, 1570). 5 How do the culturally determined “tastes” of authors, artists, readers, and viewers shape the production and reception of books and images of food? In food-centric regions like Florence and Parma, how did the various individuals (from cooks to duchesses) engage with and develop a performative culinary culture central to court life? Subsequently, how do still life paintings of food construct and represent culinary ideals? Through a historicized and localized study of the notions of consumption and taste, this dissertation contends that a “period appetite” with must be established in order to understand visual and textual sources related to food and cooking. 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 played complementary roles that assured the vital role of a sophisticated and theatrical cuisine in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian courts. Because these banquets were so central to the operation of ducal courts, they cultivated the vast economic and agricultural resources needed to support a refined culinary culture and employed the skilled individuals necessary for its execution. Preparing, presenting, and consuming elaborate meals were not only deeply ritualized 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. 6 This dissertation examines extant documentation of this rich culinary culture across extensive primary sources that combine word and image. My studies of the seventeenth-century “period appetite” at the 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. My focus on the culinary culture of courts is due to the lack of documentation of the cooking practices of the lower classes; however, a study of these rising culinary professionals takes note of the strategies they used for self- promotion and social mobility. In so doing, they actively shaped an idealized culinary culture specific to their courtly and regional environs. Early modern culinary practices—including the processes of understanding, selecting, organizing, butchering, cooking, and presenting foods—mediated between nature and man and I bring out their ideological links with areas of contemporary medicine, alchemy, and botany. 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 culinary culture 7 to their patrons in Florence and Parma. Elevated culinary culture was essential to the structure and functions of the Medici and Farnese courts and that 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. The first chapter examines the hierarchy of people, goods, and spaces related to the culinary pursuits of the Medici and Farnese courts. Culinary culture allowed for both the daily and ceremonial confirmation of this hierarchy by always positioning the duke at its apex. Ducal families were the recipients of the choicest cuts of meat and the viewers of sumptuous still life paintings housed in private villas. The second chapter focuses on the illustrated treatises written by sixteenth-century cook Bartolomeo Scappi and seventeenth-century steward Mattia Giegher. These examples of luxurious, widely circulated, and popular books reveal how their authors articulated their extensive, particular knowledge of cooking and food presentation through descriptive text and diagrammatic images for elite readers rather than working cooks. Through this staging of their culinary skills, the authors attempted to professionalize their roles and elevate their social positions. After establishing the contours of sixteenth- and seventeenth- century culinary culture, the second part of the dissertation deploys this knowledge to analyze still life paintings of edible goods. The third chapter examines Medici court artist Giovanna Garzoni’s production of delicate fruit and vegetable miniatures for a villa outside Florence. Her botanical accuracy and a sumptuous display of edible goods directly appealed to the appetites of her patrons for both. Felice Boselli, working for the Farnese, Sanvitale, and Meli Lupi families, deployed culinary iconographies on a 8 much larger scale, as the fourth chapter explores. Boselli’s series of oil paintings presenting bounties of meats, fish, animals, fruits, vegetables, and kitchen utensils established a regional vision of unlimited abundance that shored up the value of culinary pursuits and flattered his landowning patrons. Cooks and stewards transformed raw goods and presented them as refined, balanced meals on a daily basis, and they continued their performance of culinary culture in their ostensibly instructive treatises. At the same time, artists created series of paintings that offered culinary fictions to their aristocratic viewers. For the seventeenth-century Medici and Farnese courts, a multifaceted culinary culture organized the rhythms of court culture and was perpetually enacted through both text and image. Culinary culture encompasses a substantive range of the human experience, and can include everything from growing, harvesting, producing, processing, buying, preparing, dressing, cooking, cutting, serving, and eating food. Representations of these activities in paintings, drawings, photographs, inventories, gifts, text, and discourse about food are equally significant interlocutors in shaping culinary culture for any given period in history. The courts of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy experienced a swell of interest and activity in professionalized culinary activity that carved a central position for itself in court culture by becoming a key tool for diplomacy and for the daily and ritual confirmation of social order. Historians of food have largely reconstructed the eating habits of the elite rather than lower classes due to available Early Modern Italian Culinary Culture 9 documentation. This elite culinary culture touches on issues of health, medicine, social class, agriculture, the import of New World goods, banqueting, and ducal hospitality. A basic understanding of commonly held beliefs about the body and the appropriate consumption of food is necessary when examining the history of eating in early modern Italy. 4 Galen’s writings from the second century A.D. informed both learned and popular dietary beliefs. Humoral physiology—the notion that good health could only come from a balance of four humors: blood, choler, phlegm and bile— dictated Galen’s philosophy. 5 4 In the rapidly growing field of food history, Ken Albala’s book Eating Right in the Renaissance provides a valuable overview of European culinary and medical treatises for this time period. Albala's work provides an indispensable survey of Renaissance dietary texts and treatises in three periods: 1470- 1530, 1530-70, and 1570-50. He analyzes medical and dietary texts that frequently re-frame the writings of Galen, Medieval Arab and Jewish authors. This echoes tendencies in Renaissance scientific writings to rely heavily on ancient authorities. Albala's work re-asserts the centrality of food and diet for better comprehending the self-fashioning of early modern people, suggesting the merit of more intense investigation of culinary practices. Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Chicago Press, 2002). Each humor had a unique combination of hot, cold, moist, and dry properties and proper health could only be obtained through suitable humoral balance. In turn, an arrangement of these humors comprised each person’s individual complexion, and diet became a medical tool to correct imbalances. Therefore, cooking in the Renaissance went far beyond subsistence, as it was considered an essential part of the maintenance of one’s health. The process of cooking also relied on these notions of balance. Foods could be dry, moist, cold or hot by nature, and thus the cook had to prepare them in a way that would balance these essential qualities (for example, the hot acidity of lemon juice would balance the cold, wet nature of fish). Additionally, digestion was thought to be a process of “cooking” 5 Galen, Galen on Food and Diet, trans. Mark Grant (London: Routledge, 2000). 10 foods in the stomach, and therefore all foods that entered the body had to be “corrected” in order to facilitate proper digestion. 6 A manuscript produced at the Farnese court in 1632 presents further documentation that foodstuffs remained equally significant for their medicinal and healing powers as for their ability to please the palate. 7 Marco Aurelio Dosio, the barber-surgeon for Duke Odoardo compiled his medical treatments in a bound book of secrets, arranged alphabetically by type of ailment or the primary ingredient of its remedy. Through this manuscript containing the ducal physician’s records of his cures, we can see evidence that at the Farnese court officials such as cooks and doctors sought to document their work in manuscripts (and print) for both practical and self- promotional uses. Remedies are specified for everything from kidney stones to whitening teeth; one example recommends olive oil cooked with wine and tobacco leaves as a salve for wounds. 8 6 Ibid., 244-45. This document catalogues hundreds of recipes for remedies, many of which are for the same ailments such as tooth or leg pain. As early modern medicine understood the humoral complexion of each body to be enormously different (depending on gender, class, or even profession) it is clear that no one treatment would be effective for all individuals. Therefore, the wide range of recommendations offers many cures for different bodies. Most remedies are not only 7 Marcantonio Dosio, I secreti di Marcantonio Dosio barbiere e chirugo del Duca Odoardo Farnese (Parma, 1632). Biblioteca Palatina MS PR 1281. 8 “Rx olio d’oliva 3 vi vino ottimo bianco o rosso, 3 vi, foglie di tabaco verde, uno bon pugno, di fa cuocere il d.e Tabaco assieme con olio, et vino sino alla Consumat.re del vino doppo li cole et servati in naso ottavi pe le ferite e ottimo rimedij.” Dosio, Secreti, 65. All English translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. 11 based on the ingredients of herbs, foodstuffs, wine, or sugar (cooked or uncooked) but their consumption is also prescribed along with, or in lieu of, meals. The manuscript was evidently created for actual use, as the pages are tabbed and alphabetized and either the original author or a later owner flagged many remedies with nota bene. 9 The concept that diet should conform to an individual’s medical needs as well as one’s social status or occupation was pervasive. Not only did general poverty prevent the majority of families access to the varied and lavish diets of the upper classes, widespread and recurring problems of famine and grain shortages plagued sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy. The court physician deployed foodstuffs into medicinal treatments, a function that was not mutually exclusive of highly polished court cookery. 10 9 In comparison to the culinary manuscripts produced at the Farnese court (written by Carlo Nascia and Antonio Maria Dalli), which are more decorative and luxurious in nature, Dosio’s book was to be frequently consulted and utilized. Items such as beans, vegetables, chestnuts, and grains made up the bulk of the lower class diet while the landowning upper classes ensured a constant supply of animal protein and vegetables as well as refined flours and spices to create more elaborate meals. Dukedoms or other governing structures made up the city- states of what is now Italy; in Northern Italy, land was largely owned by dukes or aristocrats and farmed by tenants who paid their lord with a portion of the harvest. Many aristocratic families maintained their investments in land and agriculture as this was more stable and consistently lucrative than trade, and it also allowed for the 10 Piero Camporesi, a scholar of folklore, also notably explored food patterns, particularly of famine, in the late medieval world. Piero Camporesi, Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe, trans. David Gentilcore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). See also Anna Maria Nada Patrone, Il cibo del ricco ed il cibo del povero: contributo alla storia qualitativa dell'alimentazione (Turin: Centro Studi Piemontesi, 1981). 12 cultivation of (ideally) secure supplies of food and the hunting of animals on their properties. Each region and duchy therefore had access to unique natural resources depending on the topography and climate of their territories, which led to a fiercely regional expression of food production and consumption. Along with these local products, elite palates also desired exotic flavors and goods. The conquest of the New World, initially driven by the desire to find expensive spices in Asia, brought back new and exotic foodstuffs such as corn, potatoes, peppers, tobacco, tomatoes, chocolate, squash and turkeys. 11 Some New World imports were rapidly integrated: turkey and peppers were immediately prepared for aristocratic tables. Other goods, including potatoes, corn, and tomatoes, were more slowly integrated into European diets and not common until the eighteenth century. Late seventeenth-century records and treatises show the upper classes’ embrace of coffee and chocolate (usually consumed as a hot beverage). This integration of new varieties of foodstuffs from the New World into the European diet is a rich example of cultural exchange and appropriation and is remarkable to track visually. 12 11 For a discussion of the integration of these products into European and Italian diets, see Maurizio Sentieri and Guido N. Zazzu, I semi dell’Eldorado: L’alimentazione in Europa dopo la scoperta dell’America (Bari: Dedalo, 1992); Silvio Torre, Colombo: Un nuovo mondo a tavola (Milan: Idealibri, 1991), Giorgio Ortona, A tavola prima e dopo la scoperta (Genoa: ECIG, 1992); Nelson Foster and Linda S. Cordell, Chilies to Chocolate: Food the Americas Gave the World (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992). In Modena, still life painter Francesco Stringa highlighted New World goods including ears of corn and a box of 12 Reay Tannahill, Food in History (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1988). Tannahill gives an example of Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s Summer (1563) noting that it contains an image of maize. 13 chocolate in an oil painting at the end of the seventeenth century (Figure 6). 13 Pomegranates, apples, garlic, onions, pears, quince, two ears of corn, a stoneware vase, a platter of chestnuts and glass bottles are all arranged around a large box labeled “fine chocolate.” On the left side of the tableau, small bottles presumably contain spices such as pepper, nutmeg, or cinnamon. The import of spices, another commodity stemming from this new global exchange, became fundamental to Renaissance cuisine. Cooks and diners sought ways to integrate these goods, and consuming them was a sign of prestige and wealth. 14 A driving force in the market for clever kitchen staffs, sumptuous recipes, exotic spices, and innovative food presentations was courtly banqueting. The Renaissance banquet has been frequently studied as a vehicle for expression of familial or princely power and wealth. Sugar was integrated into hundreds of dishes of nearly every variety; meats, vegetables and pastries were all coated with sugar. This conspicuous consumption was clearly a sign of the diners’ wealth and prestige and was also loaded with connotations of exoticism and conquest. 15 13 Traditionally known as the “Maestro di cioccolata fina,” the creator of the painting has recently been identified as Francesco Stringa. See Emilio Negro, cat. no. 34 in Rodolfo Battistini, Bonita Cleri, Claudio Giardini, et al, L’Anima e le cose: La natura morta nell’Italia pontificia nel XVII e XVIII secolo (Modena: Artioli, 2001), 113. On chocolate see Z. Ciuffoletti, ed., Dolce Amaro: Storia e storie dal cacao al cioccolato (Florence: Alinari, 2003). Held in honor of weddings, holidays, visiting dignitaries, and 14 Additionally, corn became a staple of the lower-class diets. 15 Claudio Benporat, Feste e banchetti: Convivialità italiana fra Tre e Quattrocento (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 2001); Michel Jeanneret, A Feast of Words: Banquets and Table Talk in the Renaissance, trans. Jeremy Whiteley and Emma Hughes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Giancarlo Malacarne, Sulla mensa del principe: Alimentazione e banchetti alla corte dei Gonzaga (Modena: Il Bulino, 2000); Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals, 1450-1650 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1984); Roy Strong, Feast: A History of Grand Eating (London: Harcourt, Inc., 2002); Valerie Taylor, "Banquet Plate and Renaissance Culture: A Day in the Life," Renaissance Studies 19, no. 5 (2005): 621- 633. 14 religious events, the production and consumption of elaborate banquets was heavily symbolic and coded. The performative nature of the banquet was fundamental as the hosts, guests and servants each enacted a set of rituals that attempted to confirm and advance their own social position. A banquet’s events included the consumption of a multiple courses of food and wine accompanied by the presentation of music, theater, and dance. Specific details of the food, music, wine, and dishes all transformed the necessary task of the consumption of food into a totalizing, aesthetic experience. 16 Contemporary texts tantalize the reader with whimsical details such as songbirds hidden in napkins, elaborate statues made entirely of sugar, even peacocks served whole with fire streaming out of their beaks. 17 Alongside these delightful details, printed sources indicate a commitment to the ritual importance of banqueting, as a treatise published in Florence in 1615 indicates. Ottaviano Rabasco’s Il convito was dedicated to Don Carlo de Medici and outlined the proper ways to host and attend a banquet, drawing from numerous antique sources. 18 16 Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari, Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History, trans. Aine O'Healy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 133. The treatise addresses topics ranging from the appropriate location to the time of day and number of celebrants. Rabasco categorizes both public and private banquets whether for a wedding, birth, entrance into a monastery or to 17 Dietary historian Ken Albala indicates, “To a courtier, magnificent banquet dishes not only signify wealth, power, and sophistication but transfer those properties directly into the individual diner. An exquisite dish makes the diner exquisite.” Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance, 184. 18 Ottaviano Rabasco, Il conuito, ouero, Discorsi di quelle materie che al conuito s’appartengono: doue s’hanno strettamente, e con ordine diligente la diffinitione l’origine, la materia, il luogo, il tempo, l’apparato, i ministri, le feste, i giuochi, i ragionamenti, le circostanze, gl’effetti le deità, & imagini numi tutelari de’conuiti ... : con l’vso di varie nattioni di Greci, Romani, Egittij, Persiani, Ebrei, et d’altri, tanto de gl’antichi quanto de nostri tempi: e con vn discorso, a qual parte della filosofia si subordini il conuito (Florence: Gio. Donato, e Bernardino Giunti, & Compagni, 1615). 15 honor a visiting dignitary. He champions banqueting as a healthful and virtuous activity, differentiating himself from some medical and religious professionals of his time who denounced the lavish feasts of the elite. Rabasco concludes, “I would say that the Banquet is a civil recreation, between the food, delightful conversation and action, and at the end, one’s spirit is full of tranquility and friendship.” 19 Ducal households not only were required to regularly present huge banquets, but also to continuously host and feed visiting dignitaries and guests. Ensuring that these guests (and their service staff) were properly cared for was a massive undertaking requiring huge staffs and massive stores of equipment and foodstuffs. The development of this extraordinarily specialized culinary culture was driven in large part by the sheer number of individuals circulating through courts like the Medici and Farnese. Ducal hospitality was a powerful diplomatic tool in seventeenth-century Italy, and the culinary efforts of the kitchen and the use of lavish tableware played a key role in cultivating the image of the generous, benevolent host. In aristocratic palaces and villas, the proper deployment of hospitality was essential to the maintenance of power and prestige. The interior of the home or villa was a representation of the host, and the appropriately furnished room or proper meal directly reflected the dignity or largesse of the ducal family. Therefore, the significance of domestic objects and foods—ranging from copper chafing dishes to iron frying pans to herbs and fruits—went far beyond their actual utility. 19 Rabasco, Il conuito, 10. 16 For the seventeenth-century Medici and Farnese families, who masked their declining political power with elaborate ritual, culinary items and the expertise of the individuals who deployed them represented social, cultural, and diplomatic capital. Guests constantly flowed in and out of residences such as the Medici’s—visiting ambassadors, military officials, and duchesses (along with their famiglie, or retinues of courtiers and servants) all sought room and board at the court. The guests fed by the Medici kitchens in the 1650s and 1660s included a wide range of individuals from across Italy and Europe, from ambassadors to priests to cardinals to princes to men hired to execute fireworks displays (in parties ranging from two to over one hundred people). An extensive document kept by Medici domestic officials recorded these visitors’ identities, number in their party, date of arrival, and meals they partook at court. 20 The fact that over 300 traveling visitors (counted separately from official and local state banquets) were served in the span of two years indicates the wide range of guests housed and fed by Medici cooks as well as the large parties and frequency of such occurrences. Culinary Culture and Natural Philosophy In early modern Italy, food was intrinsically linked to the field of medicine; indeed, diet and herbs functioned as primary cures for (or causes of) disease and illness. 20 ASF, GM, 983, “Debitori e creditori 14 feb. 1654- 11 ago. 1670.” After a record of goods borrowed and returned, there is a listing of both lunch and dinner guests to the Palazzo Pitti, “Nota di forest.ri Venuti a Palazzo e loro servita' venuto a Tinello di SAS e prima.” A typical entry reads as such, “a Dutch general and his family arrived for dinner on February 18, 1657 with a total number of 4” [Arrivo' a Cena il d 18 febb. 1657 un Generale Olandese e di sua famiglia, no. 4]. 17 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as proto-scientific and natural disciplines underwent a process of expanding and re-classifying themselves, these fields frequently overlapped and morphed. 21 Alchemy, botany, and natural philosophy were engrained in medical philosophies and vice versa, placing the study of medicine and the body at the center of early modern scientific activities. Alchemical experimentation, botanical gardens, dissections, and anatomies all took place in universities or courts, the same locations that had large, productive kitchens. By investigating parallels between early scientific and culinary practice, I argue for the kitchen as another site of exploration of and experimentation with the natural world, as suggested by Pamela Smith, a scholar whose work has had a significant influence on my project. 22 21 I consider early modern practices of exploring and experimenting with the natural world in their own historical moment rather than as direct predecessors to modern science. See Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi, eds., Natural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge, Mass and London: MIT Press, 1999); Nicolas Jardine, Emma Spary, and James A. Secord, eds., Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Brian Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Nancy Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). These disciplines sought mediation between man and the natural world; preparing and consuming plants and animals certainly functioned as a direct way of dominating and engaging with nature. Indeed, cooking and butchering treatises of the period include anatomical and medical knowledge that was essential to understanding which parts of an animal were edible and how to process the carcasses to best deploy all of its parts. At the same time, as was clear in the description of the pear from Castore Durante’s herbal, naturalists possessed 22 Smith’s book The Body of the Artisan, prompted me to consider the artisanal activity of cooking in relation to scientific and artistic activities. See pages 112-14 for a comparison between kitchen and artists workshops. Pamela Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 18 and expressed extensive culinary knowledge in their books. The illustrated book became a primary tool of emerging natural history as authority shifted from ancient, textual knowledge to first-hand, visual knowledge. In the same way, cooks and domestic officials claimed authority and mastery through their treatises. The practice and philosophy of alchemy is a useful framework within which to understand the connections between practices of early modern cooking, natural philosophy, and art. Where alchemy attempted to replicate the natural world, art attempted to simulate it. 23 The elite courtly culture valued curiosity and wonder, and cultivated wunderkammer collections in pursuit of these ideals. As such, transmutation and trickery enacted for noble patrons was common, whether in fantastical sugar sculptures replicating famous architecture or Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s heads composed of fruits and vegetables. 24 These very processes of transformation are exactly what would come to be performed and perfected by the rising classes of culinary professionals and depicted by Alchemists, artists, and cooks shared similar technical processes ranging from mixing ingredients (spices, paints, clay, or foods) and cooking, firing, boiling or baking them into another substance. 23 William R. Newman, Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), xiv. For a discussion of a seventeenth-century alchemist and his negotiations of art, science, commerce and court, see Pamela Smith, The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994). 24 Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-93), an Italian court artist for Rudolf II in Prague, is famous for his composite heads, which transformed pears into noses, fish into necks, grapes into hair. In contrast to previous scholarship, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann’s recent work correctly situates these composite heads within the contexts of natural history and still life painting. He argues that the works functioned humorously as allegories and visual puns for their elite patrons. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Arcimboldo: Visual jokes, Natural History, and Still-Life Painting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 19 court still life painters. By necessity, the practice of cookery engages each of the five senses, and, therefore, is a prime example of knowledge typically gained through the body via taste, touch, and muscle memory. Cooking can easily be considered a type of “artisanal literacy” that was not typically passed down through text but rather through apprenticeship or oral tradition. 25 Thus, examining how the practices of cookery were visualized—and fictionalized—will provide insight into how text and image were exploited in order to project authority in the culinary and domestic fields. Engraved book illustrations, delicately embellished recipe treatises, and series of still life paintings all enacted and shaped an elite gastronomic ethos in the regions of seventeenth-century Florence and Parma. Representations of this culinary culture in conjunction with natural philosophy presented specific visions of the natural world, in particular that which was available to the courtly palate. To reconstruct the environment of courtly culinary culture and the collecting of culinary imagery, I have examined archival materials from the Medici, Farnese, and Sanvitale courts. This evidence supports my understanding of the people, objects, and spaces related to food preparation and consumption as deeply hierarchical with nuanced levels of power and access creating important distinctions. Art historians have traditionally scoured early modern household inventories for evidence of works of art in Inventories and Material Culture 25 Smith, The Body of the Artisan, 8. Smith primarily discusses the artist or craftsman’s work and does not extend her argument to cookery. I will leverage her discussion of artisanal knowledge as a framework for my approach in order to analyze culinary texts as examples of a codification of “embodied” knowledge. 20 efforts to solidify provenance or better understand the display of painting and sculpture. However, these documents typically include not only painting and sculpture but also extensive lists of furnishings, linens, kitchen utensils, tableware, and books. In this dissertation, I consider new evidence of cooking and eating as it was articulated through the classification and recording of kitchen equipment, tableware, cookbooks, and still life painting. I analyze a selection of extant inventories from the Medici, Farnese, and Sanvitale archives focusing not only on the content of the documents, but on their organization and rhetoric careful attention. For example, copper pots, wine jugs, and napkins were listed alongside furniture and paintings. Each inventory might contain the possessions of a particular palace or villa or of a duke or duchess and was compiled by top-ranking domestic officials, usually majordomos or secretaries. The documents establish a rhetoric of control and limited access to expensive kitchen and table utensils, particularly seen in lists that track the borrowing and return of pots, pans, plates, forks, or glasses by members of the court. Many inventories were organized by room, giving insight into how and where items were kept. I argue for the inventories’ utility as evidence of the relative value of kitchen and table implements as well as the creation of strict hierarchies in courtly culinary culture. Renaissance courts and aristocratic residences are known for their patronage of painting, sculpture, luxurious furniture, and sumptuous clothing. The focus on lavish material goods led to an increased specialization of the objects and focus on their aesthetic and functional qualities, “triggering a rapid process of differentiation, 21 specialization and functional improvements.” 26 The purchasing, organization, and care of these costly items became a fundamental duty of the household staff. Indeed, the value of a copper pot might surpass that of a small painting, hardly the case today. As such, many art historians have shifted from the study of individual works of art to understanding the context of the domestic interior. The study of Renaissance material culture has been undertaken by scholars who assert the circulation of furniture, clothing, and tableware as an economic, social, and artistic force. 27 Scholars such as Richard Goldthwaite, Lisa Jardine, Patricia Brown, and Evelyn Welch have reconfigured the study of the Italian Renaissance to focus on the production and patronage of material culture. 28 Jardine, a pioneer in this field of study, ambitiously re-imagines the early modern period through its production and circulation of luxury objects in Worldly Goods. 29 26 Guido Guerzoni, “Servicing the Casa,” in At Home in Renaissance Italy, exh. cat., eds. Marta Ajmar- Wollheim and Flora Dennis (London: V&A Publications, 2006), 149. Guerzoni, on page 151, calls attention to the masses of vendors, repairmen and craftsmen who would have circulated throughout the household, making it essential to track household goods. He also reminds us that “nothing was wasted and little was thrown away, with continuous repairs, adjustments, modifications and re-uses.” Covering a broad geographical area, she investigates the production and circulation of objects such as books, scientific instruments, and maps. Welch’s Shopping in the Renaissance takes a critical eye to the people, spaces, systems of credit, 27 Richard A. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300-1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Lauro Martines, “The Renaissance and the Birth of Consumer Society,” Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998): 193-203; Daniel Miller, ed., Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors (New York: Berg, 2001); Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400- 1600 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991); Evelyn Welch and Michelle O'Malley, eds., The Material Renaissance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). 28 Along these lines, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London presented an exhibition in the fall of 2006, “At Home in Renaissance Italy,” which unites a variety of artifacts in reconstructing a Renaissance home. Ajmar and Dennis, eds., At Home in Renaissance Italy. 29 Lisa Jardine, Worldy Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (New York: Nan A. Talese, 1996). 22 and values associated with the buying and selling of food, clothing, and furnishings. 30 Wealthy families had extensive collections of small decorative objects, expensive game sets, furniture, and tapestries in addition to painting and sculpture. Tableware, delicate glassware, painted ceramics, whimsical salt cellars, and expensive gold and silver objects were in high demand for the upper-class table. 31 While studies of material culture have superbly outlined the importance of this early modern spirit of acquisition (which included everything from natural artifacts to jewelry), there has not been a focused consideration of strictly kitchen-related objects. Most Renaissance kitchen equipment, while extremely valuable and expertly crafted in its time, does not survive. Rather, one must study representations of the utensils in inventories, print, and still life painting, and this dissertation will show how these depictions of kitchen utensils came to signify the extensive skill and artistry of rising professional cooks as well as to allude to the wealth of their patrons. Print culture in early modern Italy facilitated the ready spread of ideas, images and information, connecting disparate thinkers and craftsmen working in far away locations. In Italy, the publishing centers were Venice and Rome with smaller houses working in almost every city and court. The qualities of books ranged wildly from Printed Culinary Treatises 30 Evelyn Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400-1600 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). 31 On Venice, see Patricia Fortini Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004). Brown, who has focused solely on Venice, ably reconstructs the domestic interior of Venetian noble families through archival documentation and close study of extant objects. 23 small, portable, and cheap texts to lavishly illustrated and gilded volumes aimed at the extremely wealthy. Several features of early modern books must be considered in this overview of the medium. The texts were not sold as bound editions; rather the folio pages were sold and the customer would visit another shop for book binding, and therefore, extant early modern books often change in content and level of illustration. This challenges Elizabeth Eisenstein’s nevertheless foundational concept that the printing press offered previously unavailable standardization, dissemination, and fixity of text and image. 32 Adrian Johns has problematized these notions and instead explores how different audiences understood print material, how authors and publishers asserted expertise through print, and how the very authority of “print culture” was constructed. 33 Scholars have used texts of culinary literature in many ways: to trace the presence of individual ingredients and their usage in a variety of recipes, to find early Undeniably, the printing press offered an opportunity to spread reasonably unified and replicable concepts beyond geographical and spatial boundaries. However, I argue that for emerging household and culinary officials, printed books both created authority and established a market for this specialized information. Therefore, the printed texts not only codified cooks’ skills and knowledge, but also helped promote their authors as experts with valuable knowledge to share. 32 Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Vols I-II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). For responses to Eisenstein’s work, one example is Peter McNally, ed., The Advent of Printing: Historians of Science Respond to Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Montreal: Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, McGill University, 1987). 33 Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 24 iterations of current dishes in regional Italian cuisine, to recreate recipes in modern kitchens, and to assert the dominance of certain nations’ cookery (for example, Italy versus France). Instead, I investigate the relationship between text and the engraved images included in such books, arguing that they should not be viewed as informative illustrations of a knowable past—windows into fragrant kitchens—but rather as complex iterations of the challenges apparent in attempts to elevate food preparation and to articulate the expertise in food preparers’ highly specialized skill sets. I take from Michel Jeanneret the understanding that texts about food participated in broader dialogues about behavioral norms and social construction and created models of representing experiences of the world. 34 Michel Foucault’s influential proposition that epistemologies of natural history are constructed within a given culture supports my approach. 35 34 Jeanneret, A Feast of Words. Jeanneret explores both literature related to food and banqueting and literature devoted to the conversations one should have at the table, emphasizing the constructed nature of both. He explores “order” as created by an increasingly rationalized system of signs meant to represent information about the natural world. In considering the engravings in culinary literature, I analyze their diverse usage of text and symbol to convey skills and information needed to work with food and its presentation as a developing system of knowledge. In order to better understand culinary literature, I situate the texts alongside other types of books presenting illustrated information related to food, medicine, and natural philosophy and consider the similarities in their representational strategies. 35 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), The Archaeology of Knowledge; and, The Discourse on Language, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1982). 25 To understand a more widely circulating set of ideas about cookery, carving, and banquet organization, this dissertation analyzes two lavishly illustrated books: Bartolomeo Scappi’s in the sixteenth century and Mattias Giegher’s in the seventeenth. I analyze ways that the authors exploit the mediums of print and engraving to articulate their expertise and perform culinary culture in books that circulated amongst Italian and European courts. Where Scappi’s and Giegher’s books provide a clear example of expressly stated culinary texts, information about food and diet was found in many iterations of early modern print and manuscript culture. 36 These diverse but often overlapping genres are united by their inclusion of dietary information and discourse. Culinary, medical, and herbal information came in many textual forms: printed books, manuscripts, poems, proverbs, and collections of segreti, or secrets, which were remedies (often based on herbs and diet) collected frequently in manuscript form but also transformed into popular printed books. 37 36 Platina’s De honesta voluptate et valetudine (Venice, 1475) is the first printed culinary text. It was soon translated into the vernacular, and most culinary texts that followed were then published in Italian. Platina, Platina, on Right Pleasure and Good Health: A Critical Edition and Translation of De Honesta Voluptate Et Valetudine, trans. Mary Ella Milham (Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998). The existence of both manuscript and printed books of secrets opens onto another important point: the production of luxurious manuscripts during a boom of inexpensive print culture. In the late seventeenth 37 Some examples include Ugo Benzi, Regole della sanità et natura de’cibi (Turin: Gio. Domenico Tarino, 1620); Michele Savonarola, Libreto ... de tute le cose che se manzano (Venice: Simone de Luere, 1508; Reprint, Padua: Editoriale Programma, 1991); Girolamo Ruscelli, De’ segreti del Reverendo Donno Alessio Piemontese (Venice, 1555); Castor Durante, Il tesoro della sanità (Rome: Francesco Zannetti, 1586; Reprint, Rome: Peliti, 1965); Alessandro Petronio, Del viver delli Romani, et di conservar la sanità di M. Alessandro Petronio (Rome: Domenico Basa, 1592). See William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996). 26 century, court cooks in Parma created idiosyncratic, finely decorated manuscripts that existed in very few copies and circulated only within their region. Moreover, the production of these manuscripts despite the dozens of printed culinary treatises on the market signals their own distinct importance in the crafting of culinary culture. To briefly outline the varying modes of expressing gastronomic information, I will explore texts that best exemplify each “genre” [Appendix A]. I use the term genre loosely as I do not want to establish strict categories but argue that the content of the books and manuscripts are in fact quite varied, and, thus, these broad designations are for organizational purposes only. For example, many herbals and books related to the burgeoning field of botany express not only the physical properties of plants and herbs but also their culinary and medical uses. Pier Andrea Mattioli’s commentary of the ancient authority Dioscorides was illustrated and reprinted numerous times and represents one kind of herbal reliant on ancient authority. Others purport to rely on the first-hand knowledge of particular specimens. 38 Linked in many ways to the herbals, treatises devoted to agriculture convey information about the proper uses of various crops as well as how and where to plant them. 39 Addressing the diner, books of manners and courtesies encouraged an increasingly formalized set of rituals for proper comportment that would signify one’s social status. This often related to eating and drinking, where seemingly basic activities 38 I will discuss herbals and their expression of culinary information in detail in Chapter 3. 39 In particular, Pietro Crescenzi’s early text proved extremely popular throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Crescenzi, Pietro Crescentio tradotto nouamente per M. Francesco Sansouino (Venice: Francesco Rampazetto, 1564). 27 became highly regulated. Baldassare Castiglione emphasized in his Book of the Courtier (Venice, 1528), “the courtier has to imbue with grace his movements, his gestures, his way of doing things and in short, his every action” which would include eating. 40 Now what do we think the bishop and his noble friends would have said to those we sometimes see who, totally oblivious like pigs with their snouts in the swill, never raise their faces nor their eyes, let alone their hands, from the food in front of them? Or to those who eat or rather gulp down their food with both their cheeks puffed out as they were blowing a trumpet or blowing on a fire? [...] Truly men like these are not worthy of being received... Giovanni Della Casa’s later Galateo is another example: 41 Such texts find many parallels in the culinary and steward literature that instructs the household officers in appropriate etiquette. In order to be worthy of serving at a gentleman’s table, the cook or steward also had to conform to specific behavioral norms that emphasized cleanliness, sobriety, hygiene, and graceful movement. These roles embodied the increasingly ritualized behavior for the preparation and eating of food. Beginning with the ever-present myths of cuccagna (tales of a land of plenty with rivers of wine and sausages growing on trees) works of literature frequently articulated themes and metaphors of food and consumption. 42 40 Quoted in Ronnie Mirkin, “Performing Selfhood: The Costumed Body as a Site of Meditation Between Life, Art and Theatre in the English Renaissance,” in Body Dressing, eds., Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson, (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 155. Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. George Bull (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967). See also Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano (University Park, PN: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995). Eating habits were used 41 Giovanni Della Casa, Galateo, trans. Konrad Eisenbichler and Kenneth R. Bartlett (Toronto: Center for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 1986), 9. 42 Herman Pleij, Dreaming of Cockaigne: Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life, trans. Diane Webb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); Robert Appelbaum, Aguecheek’s Beef, Belch’s Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections: Literature, Culture, and Food Among the Early Moderns (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 28 as tropes for characterization in literature; seventeenth-century poets often comically characterized individuals based on their appetites. 43 More well known examples include Francesco Berni’s (1497-1536) opere burlesche, Teofilo Folengo’s opere maccheroniche (1491-1544), and later, Giulio Cesare Croce (1550-1609). 44 Folengo’s Baldus, a work of macaronic literature, presents many vivid scenes of bawdy, feasting, fun. The text often emphasizes the processes of making food with comic devices, satires, and linguistic jokes. 45 There was one who was fricasseeing poultry livers with bacon: another sprinkling ginger and pepper on to the fricassees: another making a yellow sauce for the waterfowl...Others are taking out of the oven potted pates on which they put Venetian cinnamon: another takes boiled capons out of the pan, puts them on to a big dish and then sprinkles sugared rosewater over them. For example, a description of preparations for a feast focuses on the kitchen workers: 46 According to Jeanneret, “the shift from consumption to production and the emphasis on the mixing of raw material draw attention to the writer and his verbal concoctions.” 47 43 Laura Giannetti, “Italian Renaissance Food-Fashioning or The Triumph of Greens,” California Italian Studies Journal 20 (2010): 1. Giannetti coins the term “food-fashioning” to describe the parallels between people’s diets and social status. Her article studies early modern authors’ deployment of these stereotypes in poetry and prose: “Literature, in turn incorporated these assumptions and depicted a society where what people ate represented a meaningful and appropriate confirmation of their social position.” In utilizing culinary and alimentary themes, Folengo (and later François Rabelais) 44 See works by Francesco Berni in a recent compilation, Raffaele Nigro, ed., Francesco Berni (Rome: Istituto poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1999), also: Giulio Cesare Croce, L'eccellenza e trionfo del porco: e altre opere in prosa, ed. Monique Rouch (Bologna: Pendragon, 2006), Giulio Cesare Croce, Banchetto de’ mal cibati comedia dell’academico Frusto (Ferrara: Vittorio Baldini, 1601), and Giulio Landi, Formaggiata di sere Stentato (Piacenza: Grassino Formaggiaro, 1542). 45 Jeanneret, A Feast of Words, 215. Macaronic literature blends Latin and vernacular Italian dialects and the terms relate to a mix of flour, cheese and water that created a macaroni-like dish. 46 Qtd. in Jeanneret, A Feast of Words, 216. 47 Ibid. 29 constructed his tales as modes of release from social norms via extravagant feasts, conviviality and consumption. 48 Outside but related to the realm of bawdy literature, a small selection of treatises emphasized the links between food and religion and often discussed the appropriate foods for Lenten periods or fast days. P.F. Enrico’s Scalco spirituale is an example of a genre of treatise aimed at instructing the reader on how to suppress the appetite for religious purposes. It is an interesting contrast to typical dietary and culinary treatises in that it offers advice on what foods and drink religious persons should consume during a fast (bread and water) and how to avoid safely the temptations of hunger and thirst, in addition to some recipes and nutritional advice. Scalco spirituale uses the same vocabulary as books aimed at a courtly audience but for a very different application. One text uses food as a metaphor for religious meaning and another is devoted to the art of being a steward in a religious environment. Folengo’s cook is a fat joker and magician “better at spicing sauces than using a sword,” a characterization which inverts the simultaneous self-aggrandizing efforts of serious and well-mannered cooks such as Scappi. 49 From the fruit of knowledge in Genesis to the significance of the Eucharist and the Last Supper, it is clear that food was imbued with religious significance. 50 48 See Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1968), especially his discussion of “grotesque” bodies, pages 303-67. Catholic doctrine dictated diet by disallowing meat 49 Luigi Novarini, Cibo dell’Amor di dio (Venice: Gio. Salis., 1636), Paolo Zacchia, Il vitto quaresimale (Rome: Pietro Antonio Facciotti, 1637), P.F. Enrico, Scalco spirituale (Naples: Secondino Roneagliolo, 1644). 50 Through it has been heavily critiqued for its claims of essentialism, a fundamental text on late Medieval spirituality, food, and gender is Caroline Walker Bynum’s Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). See also Cristina Mazzoni, The Women in God's Kitchen: Cooking, Eating, and Spiritual Writing (New York: 30 products on certain ritual days and more generally recommended moderation in food and drink. From the thirteenth through the seventeenth centuries, church officials and governments periodically enacted sumptuary legislation that attempted to control overly lavish clothing, entertainment, and banqueting. Additionally, a number of “how-to” books emerged in the early modern period, aimed at readers of both upper and lower class and meant to instruct on a wide variety of topics everything from choosing a spouse to childbirth to cosmetic remedies. 51 Continuum, 2005); Gillian Feeley-Harnik, The Lord's Table: The Meaning of Food in Early Judaism and Christianity (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994); Nathan MacDonald, Not Bread Alone: The Uses of Food in the Old Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). While the rhetoric of culinary treatises initially seem to be functioning in this mode, declaring that they will provide instructions for an apprentice or aspiring cook, the structure and readership of the texts belies these claims. As I demonstrate, culinary treatises purported to teach the skills of cooking and serving food but actually were aimed at and collected by elite audiences that would likely never apply them. Their presence in ducal libraries shows the status of culinary knowledge and its ability to confer prestige upon the book’s owner. I employ this information to understand how the text and illustrations in Scappi’s and Giegher’s books would have been understood by non-practicing readers. At the same time, the culinary information contained in archival, manuscript, and print sources produced in the service of the Medici and Farnese courts is essential for understanding the food-laden still life paintings collected in Florence and Parma. 51 See Rudolph Bell, How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 31 Compared with the subject matter and function of printed images, still life painting performed culinary culture in differing yet complementary modes. Other Renaissance depictions of food and dining can be found in religious paintings that imagine biblical banquets (the most common being the Last Supper and Marriage at Cana), genre paintings of peasants, and market scenes. Still Life Painting 52 52 The most well-known example of man actually consuming a meal is Annibale Carracci’s Bean Eater, c. 1585, Galleria Colonna, Rome. Vincenzo Campi’s Ricotta Eaters (c. 1585, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon) treats a similar theme. Patricia Simons is currently working on a project that treats sexual metaphors and themes in culinary imagery and studies several scenes such as these. Simons, “Sex in the Kitchen,” Lecture presented at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, January 26, 2010. Despite the newfound interest in fine dining, depictions of individuals actually consuming or eating food are rare (and only show lower-class people doing so) even in banquet scenes which tend to highlight the elegant gestures of the figures instead. This paradox brings to light the social mores of a courtly “period appetite” that prized the transformation of foodstuffs into refined dishes, adopted the personal knife and fork to consume foods more cleanly, and enacted the daily consumption of food in a ritualized, hierarchical fashion. As the most frequent depictions of food culture are found in still life paintings, these works were participants in the imagining and shaping of idealized culinary culture. By relating painting to historical evidence of food and dining, this dissertation departs from previous studies of Italian still life painting. Giovanna Garzoni and Felice Boselli are two court artists from seventeenth-century Italy who used fruits, vegetables, dairy products, meats, and fish in their paintings. The artists represent differing ends of the spectrum of medium and scale but both produced series of paintings intended for villa residences. Garzoni’s and 32 Boselli’s works must be situated in the study of Italian still life painting but also connected to culinary culture to understand the works’ edible subject matter. Garzoni and Boselli’s paintings, by portraying fictions of abundance and bounty, both shaped and confirmed aristocratic tastes. This dissertation builds on Svetlana Alpers’ landmark study The Art of Describing in which she declares seventeenth-century Dutch painting (including still life) to be fundamentally separate from Italian painting and proposes that it be considered with an entirely different set of analytical terms, including concepts of description. 53 Building on Alpers’s contentions, I return to Italy and argue for the prominence of native still life painting in seventeenth-century Italy and the need for a new set of evaluative criteria with which understand it. Patrons imported Northern artists and works, but many Italian painters took up the genre and became quite successful, and I propose the consideration of Italian still life with a new set of evaluative criteria. Historically, still life painting has been marginalized in the study of Italian art history, a trend beginning with Vasari’s categorization of such works as cose piccole (little things). 54 53 Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Alpers argues against a particular theory of Italian Renaissance art: an art of disegno promulgated by Leon Battista Alberti in the fifteenth century and Giorgio Vasari in the sixteenth. This version of “Italian Renaissance art,” with Michelangelo as its hero, glorifies historical and religious paintings wherein human beings perform on a spatially accurate stage. However, this tidy, Florentine- biased view of artistic production in Renaissance Italy belies the rich production and consumption of regional painting styles and decorative arts. The study of still life painting in Italy has long been characterized by statements such as these: 54 Charles Sterling, Still Life Painting from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 63. 33 But the predominance in art which had shifted to Holland, and the vast productions of the Dutch masters of still-life which overflowed the rest of the Continent, reduced the few late Italian painters in the still-life genre to little better than imitators of the alien school. 55 While couched in the language of an early twentieth-century art historian, the sentiment that Italian still life painting merely copied the themes and styles of Northern works has remained steadfast. Although the study of Italian still life painting has been taken up with renewed vigor by Italian art historians since the 1960s, much of the scholarly work has focused on attribution and stylistic comparison. Research has in many ways centered on a search for biography and re-creation of artists’ oeuvres. While this important work informs my research, my project will instead focus on visual and historical contextualization of food-related still lifes in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna rather than a connoisseurial approach. 56 My case studies center on still lifes that depict foods and kitchen objects—fruits, vegetables, butchered animals, pots, and dishes—and situate the works in a wider visual culture of print, the sciences, and collecting practices. 57 The historiography of still life painting reads as an investigation of origins: early work on the genre focused on determining exactly where and when it developed in 55 Geoffrey Holme, ed., Flower & Still Life Painting (London: The Studio Limited, 1928): 2. 56 Though they are important centers of still life production, I will not discuss still life in Rome, Naples or Genoa and instead focus on Florence and Parma where still-life was particularly prized by ducal courts and corresponded to regions that took particular pride in their agriculture and food production. For a brief survey of Neapolitan paintings of food that takes culinary culture into consideration, see I colori del gusto: Cività della tavola nella pittura napoletana, exh. cat. (Milan: Accademia Italiana della Cucina, 2008). 57 The most common subjects of Italian still lifes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are foodstuffs, flowers, luxury objects, tableware, fabrics, musical instruments, and books. I will focus solely on works that depict foodstuffs, tableware, and kitchen utensils. 34 Europe. One early proponent of an Italian genesis is Charles Sterling who charted still life’s origins in antiquity shifting to fourteenth-century niche paintings in Florence to fifteenth-century marquetry. 58 Others posit the beginnings of still life in Netherlandish painting and manuscript illumination, and some champion Caravaggio or Arcimboldo as the originators of Italian still life. In 1950, Roberto Longhi posited the thesis that painters before Caravaggio’s c.1599 Basket of Fruit were merely “descriptive” and did not practice within an independent genre, an interesting predecessor to Alpers’ argument. In 1964, a massive exhibition, La Natura Morta Italiana, traveled to Naples, Zurich, and Rotterdam, and the curators recovered and solidified attributions for hundreds of paintings. 59 Mina Gregori has compiled numerous studies and exhibitions of Italian still life, again focusing on questions of attribution and authorship. 60 Previous work on food imagery has been limited to studies of Italian genre painting of the late sixteenth century, and scholarship on still life imagery of the My project instead connects scholarship in the history of art, food, and science in order to critically situate early modern images of food from still life painting in their specific cultural environs. 58 Charles Sterling, Still Life Painting from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1981). 59 La Natura morta italiana, exh cat. (Milan: Alfieri & Lacroix, 1964). 60 Mina Gregori and Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern, Natura morta italiana tra Cinquecento e Settecento (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2002). See also: Francesco Porzio, ed., La natura morta in Italia, vols. 1-2 (Milan: Electa, 1989), Luigi Salerno, Natura morta italiana: Tre secoli di natura morta italiana; La raccolta Silvano Lodi (Florence: Centro Di, 1984), Luigi Salerno, Still Life Painting in Italy, 1560-1805, trans. Robert Erich Wolf (Rome: U. Bozzi, 1984), John T. Spike, Italian Still Life Paintings from Three Centuries (Florence: Centro di, 1983). 35 sixteenth and seventeenth century has not considered the history and culture of food. 61 Images of kitchens, banquets, markets, and still lifes tend to be interpreted symbolically, or simply as indicators of sensuality and decadence. Some art historians have begun to connect food history to visual culture but often lack an historically grounded approach to taste and consumption. 62 Conversely, studies of food history tend to utilize images in an illustrative manner not critically considering them as a primary source or questioning their construction. For a recent example, June di Schino and Furio Luccichenti’s rich and otherwise rigorous volume on Bartolomeo Scappi is illustrated with many paintings, prints, and objects related to food but does not provide critical analysis of the images. 63 Massimo Montanari’s work in Italian food history is superbly nuanced, centralizing culinary discourses in a larger history of the period. 64 61 A recent exception is John Varriano’s Tastes and Temptations: Food and Art in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). Varriano surveys many links between Renaissance food and art including banquet scenes, still life painting, and even the uses of alimentary items such as eggs in artistic practice. For Dutch still life, Julie Berger Hochstrasser has effectively connected a history of commodity and trade to paintings. Julie Berger Hochstrasser, Still Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007). Montanari and 62 Phyllis Pray Bober was among the first to assert links between food studies and art history, and her work examines similarities between the culinary and visual arts of the Ancient to Late Gothic periods, including Mesopotamia. Phyllis Pray Bober, Art, Culture and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Kenneth Bendiner’s book Food in Painting explicitly considers images of food as a separate genre and category of art, and he surveys paintings from the Renaissance to Postmodernism, briefly contextualizing each. Through this approach he is able to make broad comparisons and groupings, but the format of the book does not allow for rigorous, historically specific analysis of the images. Indeed, the chapters, which revolve around themes such as “The Meal,” jump from image to image without regard to geographical or temporal boundaries. Kenneth Bendiner, Food in Painting: From Renaissance to Present (London: Reaktion Books, 2004). 63 June di Schino and Furio Luccichenti, Il cuoco segreto dei papi: Bartolomeo Scappi e la Confraternita dei cuochi e dei pasticcieri (Rome: Gangemi, 2007). 64 Capatti and Montanari, Italian Cuisine; Massimo Montanari, The Culture of Food, trans. Carl Ipsen (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994); Massimo Montanari, Food is Culture, trans. Albert Sonnenfeld (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). 36 Albert Capatti's Italian Cuisine explores ontological questions of Italian regional and national cuisines, and in so doing, they provide a richly detailed and useful overview of its cultural history up to the nineteenth century. Their approach does briefly touch upon imagery of food; however it is not the main focus of the book. This dissertation, rather, contends that images of food are layered with multivalent meanings and offers close readings of prints and paintings. Another historian of food, Ken Albala, has also recently taken steps to connect art history and food history, and his book The Banquet directly links figural mannerist and baroque art to contemporary gastronomy. Albala parallels the structures and styles of painting and architecture with the structures and recipes of cooking and eating. He terms seventeenth-century dining a “baroque culinary aesthetic” in which “a certain progression that leads the diner through a series of bold surprises relieved by relative calm [is] reminiscent of the structure of baroque facades and altars.” 65 65 Ken Albala, The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 25. Albala here borrows terms and forms from the discipline of art history and applies them to food history; in doing so, he endeavors to heighten the prestige of culinary arts and liken their styles to mannerist and baroque art forms. His observations are style-based, limited to painting and architecture, and do not address still life, genre, or print material—the mediums I believe offer the most potential for deeply understanding early modern processes of recording food and consumption. The field of food history is a fundamental resource for this dissertation; however, I will emphasize its relation to 37 visual culture. My work examines the producers and consumers of painted and printed images and argues that the works do not merely reflect or respond to culinary culture but play a central role in shaping and performing it. At the heart of my inquiry is a desire to better understand the Renaissance viewer, a process initiated by Michael Baxandall in his exploration of the “period eye.” Historicizing Taste and Consumption 66 Uncovering the “period appetite” is essential to our understanding of a canvas stuffed with glistening fruits or limp, butchered animals or an illustration in a recipe treatise. We better comprehend Renaissance images of food by more clearly understanding the taste—both literal and metaphorical—of their producers and viewers. Thus I link the discussion of the visual consumption of art objects to historicized notions of the visual and physical consumption of food, in this case, for the elite classes circulating at the Medici and Farnese courts. 67 66 Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). John Shearman has also argued for a greater comprehension of the Renaissance spectator and his context to better understand the visual material of the period, and I take from his work and Baxandall’s one of the key questions of the dissertation. John Shearman, Only Connect...: Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992). Therefore, for the purposes of this study, my fashioning of the “period appetite” is one based in Northern Italian court culture and shaped by the ideas of Claude Levi-Strauss, Michel de Certeau, Norbert Elias, and Pierre Bourdieu. Ultimately, the objective of this dissertation is to explore how the 67 Therefore the sense of “taste” is ultimately conditioned by social norms such as class, religion, and location. My reading of viewer response is also drawn from David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). 38 fragmented, multi-faceted aspects of this courtly “period appetite” both produce and are produced by the processes of recording culinary culture in text and image. Structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss examined American Indians and their relationships to food and its consumption, positing that all elements of this culinary culture form a type of meaningful coded language which speaks clearly of its society. 68 For Lévi-Strauss the “raw” is equivalent to nature and the “cooked” to culture—and the transforming of raw ingredients to cooked dishes is a significant cultural marker. 69 This dissertation presents case studies of culinary iconography across print and painting in order to explore how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian visual But while the conversion of raw goods into edible foodstuffs is culturally determined and unstable, so are the concepts of the states of raw, edible, or cooked. The impossibility of uncovering a singular coded language of the past should give way to the possibilities of multivalent meanings that are created by the experiences of producers, readers, and viewers. This project seeks to understand how the systems of knowledge and range of activities that comprised elite Renaissance culinary culture were produced and shaped. A multiplicity of interlocutors including physicians, butlers, cooks, publishers, princes, and artists all worked to shape (and re-shape) the shifting meanings of foodstuffs and their consumption. Thus, the recording of the ephemeral “raw” and “cooked” in print, manuscript, and painting will be investigated. 68 Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, trans. John and Doreen Weightman (New York: Octagon Books, 1979). 69 Massimo Montanari has further taken up Lévi -Strauss’s dichotomy by declaring that the raw ingredients available, constituting “nature,” are also culturally determined via traditions of domesticated animals and agriculture. Montanari, Food is Culture, 30. 39 culture constructed and deployed elite culinary culture. I examine imagery of food and cooking alongside written texts and connect notions of consumption and taste to the formation of social and professional identities. 70 The study analyzes the construction of elite dining rituals and the role of text and image in the production of these practices. I argue for connections between culinary practices and still life painting, two pursuits designed to appeal to the allied concepts of the “taste” and “consumption” of food and art. My usage of these terms acknowledges their multivalent meanings, but I situate them firmly in their historical, social, and cultural contexts. 71 French historian Michel de Certeau, whose 1980s work on everyday life transformed ideas about routines of urban life and consumption of mass culture, offers a theoretical perspective helpful to my characterization of taste as culturally determined. 72 70 This could encompass a wide range of subject matter, including cooks, stewards, diners, kitchen interiors, banquets, tableware, and edible goods. Specifically, this dissertation addresses prints depicting kitchen interiors, practices, and utensils alongside paintings of foodstuffs from the still life tradition. For studies of banquet scenes see Creighton Gilbert, “Last Suppers and Their Refectories,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, eds. Charles Trinkhaus and Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: Brill, 1974): 371-402; Carolin C. Young, “Depictions of the Last Supper,” in Food in the Arts: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1998, ed. Harlan Walker (Totnes: Prospect Books, 1998): 223-236. Using this historicized approach to the history of taste, I will apply de Certeau and 71 For a useful introduction on various approaches to early modern consumption, see Ann Bermingham and John Brewer, eds., The Consumption of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1997). 72 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). The text was first published in French in 1980. He posits an active, “tactical” approach to both concrete and abstract elements of negotiating institutions and urban spaces, ultimately placing power in the hands of the consumer rather than the producer. One key area of this tactical maneuvering occurs through cooking and eating, and in Volume 2 of The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau, along with Luce Giard and Pierre Mayol, further delves into this topic. Michel de Certeau, Luce Giard, and Pierre Mayol, The Practice of Everyday Life, Volume 2, Living and Cooking, ed. and trans. Timothy J. Tomasik (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). 40 Giard’s analysis of and respect for cooking and eating as a meaningful cultural framework from The Practice of Everyday Life. They write: Every food practice directly depends on a network of impulses (likes and dislikes) with respect to smells, colors, and forms, as well as to consistency types; this geography is as strongly culturalized as the representations of health and good table manners and thus is just as historicized. 73 However, for past time periods—in which the meals have long been eaten, their crumbs brushed to the dogs—only visual, textual, and archival evidence remain of this daily activity. 74 Italian courts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries developed ritualized and codified systems of etiquette that dictated the behaviors of men and women at the table and emphasized cleanliness and confirmation to social order. As proper etiquette informs and drives culinary culture, this dissertation project draws on Norbert Elias’s The contrasts between understanding this evidence as record or representation must be taken under consideration. What was intended as a record—the inclusion of the menu from a past banquet in a culinary treatise, for example—must be understand as a constructed portrayal of the event written by a steward desiring to amplify his status. De Certeau and Giard sought to reconstruct food cultures, but my study of printed books, paintings, manuscripts, and archival materials takes care to acknowledge the construction and purpose of these visual sources rather than viewing them as windows into or mirrors of the past. 73 de Certeau, Giard, and Mayol, The Practice of Everyday Life, 185. 74 de Certeau sought to understand those histories that have disappeared: “The wordless histories of walking, dress, housing, or cooking shape neighborhoods on behalf of absences; they trace out memories that no longer have a place – childhoods, genealogical traditions, timeless events….They are the keys to the city; they give access to what it is: mythical.” de Certeau, Giard, and Mayol, The Practice of Everyday Life, 142. 41 work on the “civilizing process” of early modern culture. 75 Sociologist and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu’s “habitus” is a helpful paradigm with which to understand the behaviors of various social classes. He explains consumption as “a stage in the process of communication, that is, an act of deciphering, decoding, which presupposes practical or explicit mastery of a cipher or code.” His demonstration of the historical, cultural, and social constructs for “innate” physical processes remains a useful mode of understanding cultural systems of etiquette. Elias traces changing social norms in relation to “unavoidable” bodily functions including eating, drinking, excretion, and sexual activity. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy, the specialized culinary culture that developed in service of the upper classes devised complex and elaborate rituals around the preparation and consumption of food. This operated as a fundamental mode for establishing and maintaining social order, and, therefore, culinary culture became a common theme in art, literature, printing, and natural philosophy. Books of recipes and manners worked in conjunction with still life painting and material culture in the “civilizing process.” I modify Elias’s conception of this ritualized behavior and contend that social identities are shaped multi-directionally rather than disseminated from the top down. I argue for the agency of both artists and domestic officials who in masterfully performing their roles and skills helped shape this social fabric. 76 75 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford [England]: Blackwell, 1994). Bourdieu’s notion of taste as a classifier is applicable for both facets of this study; the 76 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 2. 42 prevailing taste for food or artworks is culturally constructed. As I contend that culinary iconography is intimately bound with physical taste, this concept can be useful for the ingredients of a popular dish or the subject matter of a painting. Bourdieu also notes the utility of these ideas across human behaviors and customs: Although art obviously offers the greatest scope to the aesthetic disposition, there is no area of practice in which the aim of purifying, refining and sublimating primary needs and impulses cannot assert itself, no area in which the stylization of life, that is, the primacy of forms over function, of manner over matter, does not produce the same effects. And nothing is more distinctive, more distinguished, than the capacity to confer aesthetic status on objects that are banal or even ‘common’ (because the ‘common’ people make them their own, especially for aesthetic purposes), or the ability to apply the principles of a ‘pure’ aesthetic to the most everyday choices of everyday life, e.g., in cooking, clothing or decoration, completely reversing the popular disposition which annexes aesthetics to ethics. 77 The trope of transforming the “common” or everyday into an aesthetic act was an important one for late Renaissance court cookery. This was evident in both culinary trends for meat pies, jellies, aspics, and other gustatory tricks and also, I argue, in the popularity of still life painting that depicted raw ingredients almost exclusively. Such artists as Giovanna Garzoni and Felice Boselli never painted finished dishes or a banquet table, but rather alluded to the labor of transforming a variety of raw foodstuffs into cooked, refined repasts. Their visual articulation of culinary culture invoked imaginary pantries filled with the most prized specimens of the animal and vegetable worlds. 77 Bourdieu, Distinction, 5. Studies of the Courtly Appetite 43 This dissertation explores case studies based solely in Italy to present a localized and historicized interpretation of culinary culture. Other aristocratic courts in Europe did share similar predilections for lavish banqueting and the collecting of still life painting. However, the majority of extensive culinary treatises from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were written by Italian cooks and stewards. This would shift to France in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 78 This dissertation considers culinary culture not merely as a byproduct of court structure, natural philosophy, or medicine, but rather it as a fundamental element driving and supporting such endeavors. As food constructed the social identities of persons, regions, and courts, I have chosen to focus on the duchies of the Medici and Farnese to explore the differences in culinary images produced in the geographically close but radically different duchies. Florence is a traditional focus for art historical studies, but including the families of Parma and Piacenza provides a wider picture of the creation and patronage of culinary culture. 79 78 See Franç ois Pierre de La Varenne , La Varenne's Cookery: The French Cook; The French Pastry Chef; The French Confectioner, trans. Terence Scully (Blackawton, Totnes, U.K.: Prospect Books, 2006). For example, court cooks or stewards at the wealthier, more established Medici court never produced culinary treatises while two seventeenth-century cooks at the smaller Farnese court recorded their expertise in manuscript form. Both regions were known for their collections of still life painting, and, while the court painters Giovanna Garzoni and Felice Boselli both chose series of edible goods as their subjects, these artists 79 Katherine McIver has also stressed the need to explore the patronage of collectors in this “provincial” area. Katherine McIver, Women, Art, and Architecture in Northern Italy, 1520-1580: Negotiating Power (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006): 1-15. 44 worked on different scales and in distinct mediums to present divergent visions of culinary culture. Before embarking on the study of the visual and textual representations, the first chapter establishes the common structures of culinary culture at sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Renaissance courts. It outlines the centrality of culinary culture at the Medici and Farnese courts, arguing for the co-dependency of patrons and domestic officials. Cooks, stewards, and majordomos created and refined a nuanced system that regulated access to pantries, kitchens, dining spaces, equipment, and tableware. These domestic officials fashioned a deeply hierarchical approach to culinary practices that flattered their patrons and ensured a continuous need for their own increasingly professionalized services. Archival documents show the circulation of kitchen and table implements in daily court life and their relative value alongside paintings, books, and furniture. Italian courts, whose underlying order depended on daily and ceremonial reminders of the duke’s supremacy, were patrons of the skilled cooks, specialized equipment, and near-encyclopedic treatises that made up late Renaissance culinary culture. Indeed, domestic treatises were collected and housed in ducal libraries alongside humanist, religious, and natural philosophy books, indicating their circulation across Italy and elite audience far outside the kitchen. The authors of two illustrated culinary treatises are the focus of Chapter Two. Bartolomeo Scappi’s treatise (Rome, 1570 and reprinted eight times) was the first comprehensive compilation of culinary knowledge in both text and image. Several decades later, steward Mattias Giegher composed his Li tre trattati (Padua, 1629 and 45 1639) which employed text and image to explain banquet organization, napkin folding, and meat carving. This chapter examines how these authors use the medium of print to establish their professional identities and elevate their craft for the elite readers and collectors of the books. I then analyze the subject matter and construction of the engraved images that accompany each treatise, arguing that they function as visual inventories of both the specialized equipment and skills a master cook or steward needed to perform his duties. The books drew on the visual and textual rhetoric of herbals, books on anatomy, and medicine to further establish the legitimacy of and need for this specialized culinary culture. Collected by elite readers, the texts offered a vicarious experience of highly skilled professionals and the lavish meals that they produced. The third chapter turns to the Grandducal Medici court in seventeenth-century Florence where Giovanna Garzoni (1600-70) produced a series of twenty stippled, watercolor miniatures of fruits and vegetables that were hung at the Villa Poggio Imperiale. This case study of the intersections between culinary culture, illustrated herbals, and still life painting reveals that Garzoni employed a format acceptable for her gender—the miniature—to produce hybrid images that appealed to her patrons’ interests in natural philosophy and emerging botany. Garzoni’s use of tropes of botanical illustration combined with a knowing presentation of the nourishing and valuable agrarian products of Tuscan lands created precious objects of luxury for the rural villa setting and ensured her continued patronage. 46 Shifting to the late seventeenth century and the region around Parma, Chapter Four examines local iterations of culinary iconography prized by the Farnese, Sanvitale and Meli Lupi courts. Farnese court cook Carlo Nascia produced a culinary manuscript in 1684 (with copies dedicated to the Sanvitale and Meli Lupi as well) detailing lavish banquet menus and food preparations. At the same time, Felice Boselli (1650-1732) created large-scale oil paintings depicting animals in various stages of butchery including fowl, fish and quadrupeds, fruits, vegetables, bread, flasks of wine, and cooking utensils. While he was surely inspired in part by Flemish models, I argue that Boselli created series of works that alluded to his patrons’ specific appetites as his paintings evoke the profitable cheese and meat production of the region, the fashionable pursuit of hunting, and the skilled culinary professionals who rendered raw ingredients into refined dishes. For the Sanvitale and Meli Lupi families, Boselli worked in a series format to present a bounded yet seemingly limitless vision of the continuously regenerating production of foodstuffs. By collecting his paintings, the patrons could exercise ownership over a lavish culinary culture that surpassed individual meals, banquets, or harvests. The courts at Florence and Parma were patrons of both culinary culture and still life painting in the seventeenth century. As I will demonstrate, the structures of their courts allowed for the creation of an elaborate and specialized cuisine to develop and subsequently maintain their social and political dominance. Focusing on artists from these spheres provides the opportunity to highlight regional differences in their imagery. Garzoni and Boselli both studied alimentary goods in their artistic practices but did so 47 in very different ways. By articulating particular culinary iconographies, they were able to satisfy their patrons’ appetites for luxurious paintings whose subject matter reaffirmed their authority both over nature and the people in their courts. Garzoni and Boselli’s series of works, despite their differences in scale, execution, and subject matter, stage culinary iconographies to flatter their patrons. The complimentary aims of culinary professionals and still life painters worked to mediate the relationship between man and nature, guaranteeing a need for their transformative efforts. The paintings reinforced the role of specialized gastronomic culture by performing the orderly, hierarchal rituals of culinary culture for their elite viewers and readers without the limitations or troubles of expense, theft, seasonal harvest, or natural disaster. Therefore, culinary documents, treatises, illustrated books, and paintings should not be viewed as illustrations of or windows into the past but as constructed fictions responding to and ensuring the centrality of the ritualized consumption of food for seventeenth-century Italian courts. Despite their differences, these representations all engage with the difficulties inherent in recording ephemeral, sensual experiences on paper or canvas. 48 Figure 1: Can of Del Monte 100 Calorie Pear Halves (“Bartlett pears in naturally & artificially sweetened extra light syrup”) 49 Figure 2: Pere, Woodcut from Cesare Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice, 1684) 50 Figure 3: Giovanna Garzoni, Blue bowl with strawberries, pears and grasshopper eating wheat grains, between c.1641-52, [from a series of 20] Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina 51 Figure 4: Felice Boselli, Giovanetto, funghi, frutti, pesci, piccioni, 1699, [from a series of 6] Soragna, Rocca di Soragna, collection of Prince B. Meli Lupi 52 Figure 5: Frutti, Engraving from Mattias Giegher, Li tre Trattati (Padua, 1639) 53 Figure 6: Agostino Stringa, Natura morta con scatola di ''Chioccolata Fina,” second half of the 17th century, Modena, Museo Civico d'Arte 54 Chapter 1 Culinary Practices at Court Gilded carriages, tablecloths folded into pyramids, sculptures fashioned of sugar, balletic horses, lobster-shaped boats: these details of the dazzling and fantastical 1608 nuptials of Cosimo II de’Medici and Maria Maddalena of Austria tantalizingly emerge from an illustrated festival book (Figures 1.1 and 1.2). In a sixteenth-century drawing produced for the Farnese, a proud steward releases a flock of fluttering birds by cutting into a pie at a banquet table (Figure 1.3). Somewhat paradoxically, the images of these Renaissance banquets in Florence and Parma do not highlight the undoubtedly rich and varied dishes of food. Rather, the creators of the prints and drawing both underscore the hierarchical nature of courtly culinary culture by emphasizing the stratified arrangement of guests and servers and allude to the lavish creations of a new class of professional cooks. These examples also show the significance of representations of culinary culture in text and image for elite audiences and their demand for printed, illustrated culinary treatises. Public displays of power through banqueting combined with the daily demands of feeding hundreds of individuals at the Medici and Farnese courts created a robust demand for ever-more lavish and efficient modes of food production. 1 1 I have used documents from the Medici, Farnese, and Sanvitale archives in addition to printed primary sources to formulate this chapter, but much of the information related to the roles of domestic officials and the division of goods and spaces can be extended to most ducal and aristocratic courts in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy. Domestic officials at ducal courts were charged with providing meals for the duke and duchess, 55 dozens of courtiers and service staff in addition to a constant stream of visitors of varying social ranks. Therefore, the consumption of food became performative and ritualized in order to maintain order and enforce the social and physical supremacy of the ducal family. This chapter shows how the courtly “period appetite” for elite culinary practice was structured and enacted in Florence and Parma, taking the Medici wedding print and Farnese banquet drawing as starting points. These depictions of ducal banquets only allude to the immense operations of kitchens, vaults, pantries, wine cellars, granaries, gardens, and markets (and the skilled individuals working in them) that supported such events. These courts housed the vast numbers of people, spaces, equipment, tableware, and treatises needed to enact highly specialized and hierarchical culinary culture. A 1608 second-edition descrizione (festival book) for Cosimo II and Maria Maddalena’s wedding included five engravings, and the Medici-commissioned book relates the official presentation of nuptial activities for readers in fellow aristocratic circles. 2 Each engraved illustration depicts a specific event, eschewing realistic portrayals for a fusion of spatial and temporal representation that emphasizes the scale and spectacle of the procession, banquets, and performances. 3 2 Camillo Rinuccini, Descrizione delle feste fatte nelle reali nozze de' Serenissimi principi di Toscana d. Cosimo de' Medici, e Maria Maddalena arcidvchessa d'Avstria (Florence: i Giunti, 1608). Organized by Medici- hired talents and funded by their coffers, these nozze lasted an impressive four weeks 3 Four of the five prints are signed by engraver Matthau Greuter; the fifth (the horse ballet), though unsigned is thought to be Greuter’s as well. They depict Maria Maddalena’s ceremonial entry into Florence, the banquet, a mock-battle on a bridge, a horse ballet, and mock naval battle on the Arno river. 56 and served as a manifestation of the Medici Grand Ducal powers. 4 As the duchy had no historical origins in Italy, the family had to invent a lineage and naturalize their rule and Duke Ferdinand I (1549-1609) actively emphasized festive activities as diplomatic tools. 5 During his reign, many important dynastic marriages linked the Medici to other powerful families in Europe, including his own to Cristina di Lorena and his son’s to Maria Maddalena, a member of the Hapsburg line of Austria. 6 Festival books, much like culinary treatises and records of banquets, allowed these ephemeral activities expressive power beyond their actual execution; the text and image ably thwarted the geographic and temporal constraints of these spectacles. 7 4 The age of the Medici Grand Dukes was a period of absolutism in the previously republican Tuscany. The second lineage of the Medici family had been granted Dukedom by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1537, and the family worked tirelessly to legitimize and promote this position. The first Grand Duke, Cosimo I, married Eleonora of Toledo and ruled from 1537-74 in relative peace and favor, establishing the family’s position of power. Their son Francesco I (1541-87) followed, who is typically characterized as melancholy, introverted, and more interested in his alchemical, mathematical, and artistic pursuits than governing the state. 5 Marco Chiarini, “Cosimo II and Maria Maddalena of Austria,” in The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with The Detroit Institute of Arts, 2002), 77. Ferdinando I’s accomplishments were numerous: he built and developed throughout Tuscany, strengthened naval forces, supported scientific research, and was a noted patron of the arts. Daniel Ladislav, The Florentines: Art from the Time of the Medici Grand Dukes, exh. cat. (Prague: National Gallery in Prague, 2002), 18-19. 6 Cristina was the granddaughter of French Queen Catherine de’Medici, and her marriage to Ferdinand I represented a significant political tie. The French connection was further strengthened by the marriage of Maria de’Medici to King Henri IV. The marriage of Cosimo II to Maria Maddalena tied the family to the Hapsburgs and Spain, as her father was Archduke Charles of Graz. Her brother, Massimiliano, would become Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II of Hapsburg, and her brother-in-law was Philip III of Spain. 7 Other sources include archival records of the planning and logistics, the diaries of both official court chroniclers and individuals that viewed or participated in the events, and sketches or engravings. For example, Angelo Solerti’s Musica, ballo e drammatica alla corte medicea dal 1600 al 1637 offers a transcription of the diary of Cesare Tinghi, court chronicler and diarist from 1600-25. Tinghi’s diaries offer first-hand accounts of the festivals at court, and his descriptions typically match those of the Descrizione, but there are some discrepancies. Therefore, we must be warned than Rinuccini’s description is only one point of view, may leave out important details, and is certainly not a mirror of reality. Angelo Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica alla corte Medicea dal 1600 al 1637 (Florence: R. Bemporad & Figlio, 1905). 57 These books and related engravings circulated throughout Europe and went on to influence the spectacles at other courts. Clearly, this official presentation offers a specifically fashioned account of the events (likely bearing little resemblance to reality) in which they have been framed and reenacted in print. 8 A convito (the nuptial banquet), which took place in the Salone del Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio, is depicted in the second print bound in the festival book (Figure 1.1). The print shows an overhead view of the room, with tables arranged in ascending height, stepped seating on the perimeter of the room for the visiting public, and a head table for the ducal family (Figure 1.2). A key and diagram mimicking the curved head table at the bottom of the print indicates this exact seating: at the center of this table is Maria Maddalena with Cosimo, her in-laws, and five Cardinals. The ducal party is elevated on a stage, an unambiguous representation of the performativity inherent in Renaissance banqueting. The print, which folds out of the book, employs a tilted perspective to enable the viewer full visual command of the scene. It compresses the events of the evening: musicians appearing in a cloud above the audience (top left), youths jousting in the center of the tables, and Apollo and a Nymph singing on the stage. The creators of these books fully exploited the power of the printed text and image to extend the grandeur of events far beyond their actual implementation. 8 Arthur Blumenthal offers a worthy caution: “The grand dukes, who had paid to have the etchings executed, wanted not only to have the artists’ work recorded but also to show their courtly magnificence to the heads of Europe. Thus, the Medici’s having descrizioni published with accompanying illustrations of stage settings served a propagandistic purpose…” Arthur R. Blumenthal, Giulio Parigi’s Stage Designs: Florence and the Early Baroque Spectacle (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1986), 348. 58 The text vividly evokes preparations and decorations that are not depicted in the print including fantastically sculpted tablecloths: all sorts of figures, men, beasts, serpents, and plants, and vases of flowers, and every other artifice of Architecture, colonnades, palaces, lodges, domes of gardens, towers, pyramids, columns, and similar buildings, and other caprices of art, such as cages, spheres, galleries, boats, and shells, and similar things… 9 In addition to the dramatically folded tablecloths and decorations, the banquet also presented another culinary and artistic wonder: other marvels were the fantasies of sugar, with almost the same artifices…more than forty statues of twenty models, that represented the most beautiful sculptures that were in this state, and on the bases of each one poems were written. 10 The print indicates the importance of spectatorship and spectacle to banqueting as all tables are arranged to face the head table, which is elevated on a platform. 11 9 Rinuccini, Descrizione, n.p., “ogni sorta di figura, huomini, fiere, vecelli, serpenti, e piante, e vasi di fiori, ed ogni altro artifizio d’Architettura, colonnati, palazzi, logge, cupole da giardini, torri, e poti, piramidi, colonne, e simili edifizi, ed altri capricci d’arte, come gabbie, sfere, galere, navi, e cocchi, e simili....” See Teresa Orfanello, “Il Banchetto dei Principi.” MCM: la stora delle cose 4 (1998): 20 An event of this magnitude would consist of numerous courses beginning with cold dishes and salads served from the credenza tables (indicated by the letter ‘F’ in the print) and followed by hot dishes, a final cold course, and fruits and nuts to complete the meal. The diners would be served by a huge retinue of courtiers, officials, and servers dispatching the plates of food, clean linens, serving utensils, and wines. This print . 10 Rinuccini, Descrizione, n.p., “Altretanto maravigliose furono le fantasie di zucchero, con quasi i medesimi artifici...e di piu quaranta statue di venti modelli, che rappresentavano le piu belle sculture, che sieno in questo Stato, nelle vase delle quali a ciascheduna era scritto con otto qualche componimento di poesia.” It is believed that Giambologna’s workshop produced the sugar sculptures, based on existing small-scale bronzes; see Katherine J. Watson, “Sugar sculpture for grand ducal weddings from the Giambologna workshop,” Connoisseur 199, no. 799 (September 1978): 20-26. 11 Piero Marchi makes the observation that in these years of absolutist spectacle, even the act of the princes eating was elevated to spectacle, as seen here. Piero Marchi, “Il Banchetto del Corte,” in Il potere e lo spazio (Florence: Forte di Belvedere, 1980), 333. 59 highlights the maintenance of social order and hierarchy through the carefully divided tables of varying heights and the labeled royalty at the head table. The prints in this festival book exploited the spectacle and banquets of the wedding far beyond the temporal and geographical confines of its actual four-week period. The act of recording a banquet in text and image re-performs the event, allowing an aristocratic patron or recipient of a festival book to both experience and exercise ownership over a mediated representation of the ephemeral occasion. The author and engraver imposed order and perfection on their representation of the banquet, and in so doing, revealed characteristics of idealized courtly culinary culture. A drawing of a banquet given by the city of Parma in honor of Ottavio Farnese (1524-86) showcases the dramatic moment in which a whimsical pie filled with small birds has been cut open and the creatures dart about the room (Figure 1.3). This tour-de- force of pastry was fashionable in court circles; Giovanni Rosselli’s Epulario from 1516 (among other cookery texts) describes how to make this sort of pie. 12 12 Giovanni Rosselli, Epulario (Venice: Agostino Zanni da Portese, 1516). Pies and tortes filled with live birds, rabbits, or frogs were frequently referenced in culinary literature. Presumably dating from the sixteenth century and presented to Ottavio, the drawing illustrates a U- shaped table seated with gesticulating male guests and neatly arranged with plates of food and sugar sculptures. The plates (there are at least four or five per diner) appear to contain meats and molded gelatin but are not particularly detailed. The artist and context of the drawing are unknown, but the inscription indicates that it was a banquet given by the city of Parma for Ottavio Farnese. On the right side of the work, several of 60 the guests are identified by symbols and numbers to correspond with a list of names below, including Ottavio who is marked with a miniature crown. In the foreground, sumptuously dressed representatives of the city of Parma present gold and silver gifts to the Duke. Amongst the elegantly arrayed guests, the figure releasing the swooping birds (with a distinctive pose of flourish) is worth examining more closely. A guest or the duke would not have cut open and served the fanciful pie, but rather, a steward, the individual in charge of overseeing and organizing banquets. The steward’s duties were wide-ranging, and he operated both behind the scenes and, as shown in this drawing, publicly carried out his role at the banquet. This chapter explores the milieu of such officials (like this steward) and examines their duties, wages, and place at court. A nuanced hierarchy of domestic officials emerged in the courts of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy. These individuals, from pantry-keepers to cupbearers, performed highly specialized, skilled tasks to ensure the safety and luxury of culinary preparations at court. The late-seventeenth and early sixteenth centuries saw the elevation of cooks, stewards, and carvers who negotiated the court system by establishing themselves as skilled experts and courtiers. Courtiers sought prestigious positions such as a private steward or cook; proximity to the ducal family was the utmost sign of authority and prestige. These court officials operated within an architectural framework that paralleled the hierarchical organization of domestic officials. Access to kitchens, pantries, wine cellars, and dining spaces was controlled according to one’s station or gender. Inventories and other contemporary documents describe court kitchens and dining spaces and show how access to them (and the goods 61 held within) was carefully prescribed. Such documents highlight the ways that rhetoric of control and possession characterized the maintenance and ordering of culinary staff, objects, spaces, and knowledge. Household officers carefully assigned and tracked the movement of kitchen and table equipment as it circulated from person to person and room to room in service of the court’s alimentary needs. Positions were created particularly for the task of inventorying and tracking valuable furnishings, kitchen equipment, and tableware. The objects were assigned according to their relative quality, value, or refinement. Medici and Farnese household inventories indicate the careful cataloging and collection of kitchen equipment, tableware, furniture, linens, paintings, and books about food. Goods destined for the table included linens, goblets, plates, serving dishes, utensils, and saltcellars fashioned of majolica, copper, or silver. The pots, pans, ladles, ovens, basins, and spits for the kitchen were no less valuable. They were often extremely intricate and specialized (such as pans exclusively for cooking eggs) and fashioned of expensive metals such as copper. Located in the spaces of the duke’s kitchen, communal kitchen, servants’ dining room, wardrobe and cupboard, such goods were meticulously recorded and tracked by officers of the household and kitchen. Lastly, this chapter turns to the elite market for printed books (authored by actual cooks, stewards, and carvers) detailing the above-mentioned positions and skills related to cooking for and ordering a large court. These luxurious books were collected by the very courts that their authors served. Similar to the way festival books reenacted idealized versions of actual events, cooking treatises (like Bartolomeo Scappi and 62 Mattias Giegher’s) performed their expertise and seemingly infinite knowledge for an aristocratic reader. Through text and image, the books present the specialized knowledge of cooking, carving, household management, or even napkin folding in ways that assert the mastery of their authors. The end of this chapter uncovers the elusive readership of domestic and cooking treatises using evidence from ducal library inventories. Courts and aristocrats alike collected these books and this audience of individuals who would never practice the skills presented by the treatises has significant implications for understanding them. These performative culinary practices, and representations of them, positioned culinary culture as central to the smooth functioning of court society. I sometimes ponder how very important an individual is who is a personal officer of noble Princes since in the face of so many dangers they place their life in his hands. The Cook is one of the foremost of these officers, and I used to shudder when I held the office that you aspire to, and now give God the most heartfelt thanks for having seen me through it honourably. In truth it is one of the most care-racked offices that can be imagined, because you have constantly to keep your eyes wide open: in striving to do your duty and to avoid any mishap, you must always have your mind on the dangers around you. The Famiglia of the Kitchen 13 Threats of poison, calamity, under- or overcooked food clearly engaged Domenico Romoli, who, writing at the end of the sixteenth century, advised aspiring scalchi (stewards) of the grave importance of their position. His language underscores the 13 Domenico Romoli, La singolar dottrina (Venice: Gio. Battista Bonfadino, 1593). Quoted in Bartolomeo Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi: L’arte et prudenza d’un maestro cuoco, trans. Terence Scully (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 664. 63 personal and professional skills that a steward or cook needed to be worthy of serving “noble Princes” and paints an image of a cautious, vigilant individual. Renaissance court households and kitchens were ordered hierarchically with the ducal family at the apex of the organizational system. 14 And in this we may observe the order of the heavens, because if each star turns by itself in its respective sphere, with each one following but not conflicting with its superior forces...in this way harmony is preserved, and the machine of nature. Aspiring courtiers as well as members of the lower classes filled the majority of the positions held at court. Artists, writers, jesters, poets, natural philosophers, physicians, military guards, ladies-in- waiting, farmers, pages, horsemen, and maids, along with the large kitchen and steward staffs, were among the various individuals supported by the court regime; quite frequently, room and board were included in their remuneration. Domestic treatises often imagined the smoothly-functioning court as a well-oiled machine or continuously circulating, self-contained universe. After describing the system in which the principal ministers of court reported to the maestro di casa (head majordomo) but operated independently, seventeenth-century steward and author Francesco Liberati wrote, 15 14 For a graphic illustration that attempts to depict this concept of interconnected court hierarchy, see Sergio Bertelli, Franco Cardini, and Elvira Garbero Zorzi, Italian Renaissance Courts, trans. Mary Fitton end Geoffrey Culverwell (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1986), 26-27. 15 Francesco Liberati, Il perfetto maestro di casa di Francesco Liberati Romano (Rome: Michele Hercole, 1678), 48. “Et in questo si deve osservare l'ordine del Cielo; perche se bene ciascheduna stella si volge da se stessa nella propria sfera, con tuttocio segue ancora senza contrasto la forza superiore, & il primo mobile: onde si conserva l'armonia, e la machina della natura.” 64 By comparing the structure of the court to the heavens (with independent—but loyal— stars revolving around a ducal sun), Liberati naturalizes the hierarchical structure and rationalizes the controlled spheres of access. The constant influx of individuals of varying social stations further necessitated the strictly organized kitchen and dining spaces of the Medici residences, as well as systems to guard against the theft or accidental loss of valuable furnishings or cuts of meat. Every individual tending to culinary production at court had a clearly delineated social and professional office that was replicated (more or less) at other aristocratic courts in Europe. Each palace or villa had a staff of cooks, maids, gardeners, and other officials, and individual members of the ducal family also had their own retinues of personal cooks, stewards, and assistants. 16 Official documents and lists of provisions frequently employed the term bocche (mouths) for these domestic officials, a characterization that makes plain (in alimentary terms) their dependence on the court for literal nourishment. 17 16 Guido Guerzoni has explored the Este court bureaucracy in great detail and his work articulates an archival-based study of the details of its organization. See: Guido Guerzoni and Guido Alfani, “Court History and Career Analysis. A Prosopographic Approach to the Court of Renaissance Ferrara,” in The Court Historian 12, no. 1 (2007): 1-34 and Guerzoni, “The administration of the Este courts in the XV- XVII centuries,” Micrologus 16 (2008): 537-67. Dennis Romano’s work on Renaissance Venice examines the archival documentation of household officials in Housecraft and Statecraft: Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice, 1400-1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). Indeed, culinary culture daily reinforced the court’s hierarchies: through the monetary pay and edible provisions allotted to each person, the access granted to intimate spaces of cooking or dining, and the quality of foodstuffs and serving utensils assigned to each level of courtier. 17 Census data and other official documents also use bocche to designate individuals. 65 Traditionally, cooks and kitchen workers emerged from the lower classes and passed on their crafts through apprenticeship or kinship. However, the sixteenth century in Italy saw a shift in the status of these individuals, thanks in large part to their increased profile in print. The majordomo, steward, carver, and cook occupied the most prestigious positions of domestic service, and a vast literature emerged to provide guidelines and instructions for their highly ritualized and skilled duties. These treatises were written by stewards, cooks, and carvers themselves, were eventually awarded titles of honor, or came from a noble lineage themselves. Tomaso Garzoni characterized over 150 professions in his popular encyclopedia, Universal Piazza of all the Professions of the World (Venice, 1585), including officials of the table. He took a mocking tone towards the emerging pride and professionalism of cooks in particular. Garzoni first compared cooks to scholars, arithmeticians, and poets before going on to describe their status in governmental and military terms: Therefore the most illustrious gluttons [panigoni] of Cockaigne go about their business proud and haughty, because they are the capi of the pantries, padroni of the canteens, overseers of the kitchens, regents of salami, jailers of prosciutto, captains of grease, master executioners of rissole to whom necessarily is owed every respect and honour because otherwise the soup will be à la philosopher [too dull? too thick?], the stew à la Anabaptist [too watery?], the plates à la chimneysweep [dirty], the pastry à la greengrocer [too healthy?], the stuffing à la herbalist [too spicy?], and everything done inside out. 18 18 Qtd. in George McClure, The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 128. Italics and asides are McClure’s. Other domestic and culinary-related professions discussed in Garzoni’s work include: farmers, alchemists, beekeepers, wine stewards, cellar- keepers, celebrants, courtiers, credenza-keepers, wild animal domesticators, cheese-makers, gardeners, herbalists, launderers, butchers, merchants, wet-nurses, bakers, shepherds, fishermen, poulterers, sausage- makers, stewards, bird-hunters, drunks, servers, and carvers. 66 But, as George McClure observes, this wry usage of military terminology for cooks and kitchen officials combined with Garzoni’s inclusion of extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the cooks’ many skills and duties (roasting, frying, describing dishes, calculating meals, and so on) actually serves to characterize the cook as a profoundly experienced individual with a “nearly imperial bearing.” 19 This indicates the increasing recognition of cooks and other domestic officials as skilled, extensively trained masters of their craft. Cooks, stewards, butlers and carvers refined and ritualized their professions by distinguishing their wide-ranging knowledge, varied skills, and sober discretion from that of their underlings. Numerous undercooks, waiters, bakers, and pages worked under these illustrious officials. The vast numbers of individuals in the employ of a large court required a strict systematization of duties, restricted access to expensive (and potentially portable) equipment, regulated admission to ducal proximity, and structured methods of compensating and feeding each person according to their station. What must have been a hectic, bustling, ever-changing atmosphere could be contained by the deliberate placement, use, and control of kitchen tools, tableware, and the staff that employed them. 20 19 McClure, The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy, 129. Indeed, the insistence of this order in treatises and documents certainly reveals anxieties about the disorder, theft, and chaos of a poorly- run household. 20 The picture of staff hierarchies related to the kitchen and wardrobe is fairly similar in the documents of the Medici and Farnese courts. Smaller-scale residences such as the Sanvitale family’s might employ fewer of these officials, but the strict hierarchies remained in place. A selection of the many documents that informed my understanding of the court structures include: ASP, CFPP, buste 229, 250, , 251, 255 and ASF, MM, 11, ins. 4. 67 The most powerful household official, the maestro di casa or maggiordomo (majordomo) oversaw all the workers and courtiers in a residence from pages to entertainers to cooks (see Appendix B for an abbreviated glossary of terms). 21 He not only directed the entire staff of the court, but controlled its finances, and the heads of the kitchen, pantry and wardrobe reported directly to him. The maestro di guardaroba, or guardarobiere, another top-level official, cataloged and tracked furnishings in the palace or villa. The guardaroba is a term that encompasses a loose description for the office itself, or could indicate a specialized storage space in a home. A guardarobiere’s duties usually included creating and writing inventories of all furnishings including linens, furniture, paintings, and tableware. For example, the guardarobiere at the Farnese court was to maintain record books, closely monitor entry and exit of goods, and keep meticulous track of who borrows what, and the quality of those items. 22 21 Et coquatur ponendo: cultura della cucina e della tavola in Europa tra medioevo ed età moderna (Prato: Istituto internazionale di storia economica “Francesco Datini,” 1996), 325. Page 341 of this catalog contains a useful chart with an overview of the hierarchy of household positions, their roles and relative compensation. In recent work, scholars have begun to connect domestic activities to the larger program of power of state and my understanding of the household organization is indebted to the article “Il servizio a Corte e i ruoli deputati alla tavola,” pages 325-44. I have also drawn from Ken Albala, “Staff and Carving” in The Banquet (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 139-48, for a detailed discussion of court bureaucracy, and Claudio Benporat, Cucina e convivialità italiana del Cinquecento (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 2007). The master of the guardaroba sorted, maintained, tracked, and placed all fabrics, furs, vases, objects of gold and silver, as well as other furnishings. He was to keep a record of all visitors that stayed and ate in the palace and was responsible for these larger organizational duties as well as smaller tasks such as keeping the tapestries and curtains 22 ASP, CCF, serie VII, busta 51, fasc. 28. “Varie sul guardaroba ducale,” is a document from 1619 that gives instructions for keeping the guardaroba and is a helpful record of the duties of those charged with compiling these inventories. 68 open or closed in the rooms of the Duke and his guests according to the weather. 23 Domestic treatises carefully laid out the duties of each office and provide an idealized image of the qualities each should posses (see Appendix A). Domenico Romoli’s La singolare dottrina (Venice, 1560) is indicative of the multifaceted nature of culinary treatises: it explains the responsibilities of the household staff, catalogs groups of foods with their natural humors, and offers recipes on how to prepare dishes. As part of his remuneration for completing these duties, the master of the guardaroba would have lodging in two rooms on the ground floor of the palazzo but had to remain available to greet and house any guests that arrived—and was forbidden to accept tips from these guests or any other sources. 24 23 Ibid. “Ce perchi le stanze di SA et tutta la foristeria stanno forniti di tapezzerie, et letti; havreti cura di serrari le finestra la sera, perch’non ci entri dentro le stanze l’aeri della notti, ni le nebbie, et quando sara’ bel tempo aprireti le finestri, et darli l’aria, et com’havranno bisogno di spolveri vari. Le tappezzie param.ti letti, et qualsi voglia cosa lo fareti.” Romoli, nicknamed Il Panunto (“oiled bread”) begins with a table of contents and covers a variety of topics: tasks and behavior of household professionals, seasons of meat and fishes, menus organized by month, recipes, exercise, as well as herbs, beans, fruits and their properties. His treatise usefully discusses the positions in relation to the kitchen, beginning with a scalco secreto, or private steward to the prince. Romoli notes that the steward reported directly to the maestro di casa and had the significant responsibility of the upkeep and control of the kitchen and meals, including the dishes produced and the persons responsible for buying, cooking, and presenting food. He was a banquet’s principal organizer, and controlled all culinary and aesthetic aspects of the 24 Domenico Romoli, La singolare dottrina (Venice: Michele Tramezzino, 1560). 69 event: food, wine, service, and tableware (see the courtier unveiling the bird pie in Figure 1.3, who I propose is a steward). The scalco held “the life of the Master in his hands” and had to be knowledgeable of diet and medicine in order to ensure the correct dispensation of foods to the ducal plate. 25 Under the purview of the scalco was a cuoco secreto, who functioned as the head cook solely for the ducal family, or in some cases, the duke or duchess alone. Cuochi, or sottocuochi (cooks and undercooks), might also be present, working in service of the communal kitchen or in assistance of the head cook. Cooks transformed raw ingredients into finished roasts, pastries and soups both for everyday consumption and more elaborate banquets. The panoply of skills needed included not only those of good character, such as intelligence and sobriety, but also those of learned practice. A cook needed to understand the humoral properties and seasonal availability of foodstuffs and how to roast, sauté, or preserve them over an open flame. The spenditore, or bursar, was in charge of purchasing goods for the kitchen. He controlled the pricing, payment, and distribution of foodstuffs and other goods as they flowed from market to court. Taking care of the storage and maintenance of these perishable goods was the dispensiere, the pantry-keeper in charge of monitoring the foodstuffs. To further sub-divide this task, a panattiere might oversee these duties solely for bread, while a bottigliere stocked and maintained the wine cellar. Aiutanti, garzoni, or palafrenieri (assistants and servants), provided further service in the wardrobe, kitchen and at banquets for lower-level tasks such as preparation, cleaning, or serving. 25 Romoli, La singolare dottrina, 2. 70 The term credenza refers both to the storage space of valuable tableware, and to the sideboard buffet at meal service (as in Figure 1.2), and the credenziere might serve in two capacities, first as a general overseer of all the plates, serving dishes, silverware, cups, and linens stored at a residence. The credenziere would also be charged with setting up the credenza display at a banquet, that is, the careful arrangement of plates stacked on a sideboard—as well as dishes prepared della credenza which would consist of cold dishes such as fruits or salads. Like the credenziere, the scalco and other officials not only worked behind the scenes but were also prominent figures at the public banquet table. The trinciante, or carver, occupied one of the most performative roles in the banquet setting: his task was to divide and distribute the bread, fruit, meat, and fish. 26 26 See the trinciante literature in Appendix A. However, like the other participants in the banquet, his actions were perfectly choreographed and the carving of items often provided entertainment for guests as well. The bottigliere (wine steward) would also be present at a banquet. While the steward ultimately chose the wines and their order of presentation, he delegated its distribution to the wine steward and his assistants. The responsibilities of the wine steward involved storing, decanting, tasting, adjusting the wine (and water), and, finally, dispatching wine servers to deliver it to the table. The coppiere, or cup bearer, would mix and serve wine publicly, taking great care with the proper proportions of wine to water and ensuring that the appropriate wine was served with each course. Camerieri not only cleaned and maintained rooms in the ducal apartments, 71 but also served as waiters at banquets and meals, bringing out dishes, fresh linens, or other supplies. These courtiers and servants were sometimes paid a small stipend but more likely were compensated with room and board. It was the task of the maestro di casa to organize this remuneration, and he would keep extensive lists detailing exactly how many candles, loaves of bread, and bottles of wine would be allotted to each person in addition to their salary. 27 Court members’ stations were strictly reinforced by their relative rations of bread and wine, but also the quantity and quality of foods allotted at regular mealtimes. Documents authored by scalchi further illustrate the deeply-rooted hierarchies paralleled by the precise allotment of foodstuffs. For example, a Farnese document This alimentary payment was strictly delineated according to rank, and, therefore, these domestic officials who controlled, organized, baked, served, and stored the court’s holdings of foodstuffs were utterly dependent on this structure to sustain their own health and appetite. Filching leftovers from the kitchen or an extra bit of meat from the larder was strictly forbidden, and the extreme levels of restriction, record-keeping, and accountability by the hierarchy of domestic officials worked to prevent such theft. Prescriptive literature written by stewards, in particular, tends to emphasize the precautions that must be taken to avoid problems with pilfering. This strong rhetoric of concern for the security of foodstuffs and expensive utensils surely addressed a more disordered reality. 27 ASP, CFPP, buste 241-261 contain many examples of lists of bread, wine, and other alimentary rations for various years in the Farnese court. 72 from 1561 indicates the daily meat rations for varying ranks at court: the tables of the duke, courtiers that are not servants, ladies of the court, pages, kitchen officials, and the “lower” kitchen officials. 28 The document then goes on to distinguish the same for fish, plates of stew, and bread. The rations are specified both for morning and evening, and in some cases, for whether the duchess or majordomo will be dining alone or in compagnia (with visitors). Persons are not named here but rather offices (everyone from the duke to the helper in the wine cellar), giving a significance to rank and role over individual. One’s status at court was unmistakably signaled by title, duties, and clothing but also by the assigned quality and quantity of meats, fish, bread, wine, and firewood he or she received. As such, the control of foodstuffs paralleled the rigid ranking of people, making it a powerful means of enforcing order and the “natural” rule of the duke at court. Where a visiting ambassador might dine with the duke, his servants would take their meals in a separate space, the tinello, a room reserved for feeding the lower-status persons at court. The literal division of the culinary spaces of court residences further underscored the social status of those who occupied them. Palaces and villas did not typically have assigned rooms for the duke’s dining, but rather portable tables and furniture would be moved from warmer rooms in winter to gardens in summer, Spatial Organization 28 ASP, CFPP, busta 239. 73 depending on the judgment of the scalco. 29 Ladies of the court usually dined in a separate area, and often military guards and visitors also had separately assigned spaces for eating. 30 A detailed list of furnishings at the Medici villa at Ambrogiana was compiled in 1623, and several items that it describes highlight trends found in comparable documents. Kitchens were multi-chambered spaces usually located in on the ground floor at the rear of the residence to prevent the spread of fires. Often, there was a distinction between a cucina comunale and a cucina segreta, used to service the larger needs of the court or the ducal table. Other culinary spaces included wine cellars, pantries, larders, cupboards and sideboards, vaults, and, at larger courts, grain mills and ice-houses located on the property. Court culinary practices inhabited a variety of spaces beyond the kitchen, particularly at rural residences that had gardens, fields, barns, beehives, and wells. The courts might also have spaces devoted to pastry and bread-making or wine and water distillation. 31 29 Et coquatur ponendo, 325-44. The strictly hierarchical assignment of cooking and dining areas is evident along with the corresponding assignment of specific equipment to such spaces. The culinary zones recorded in this inventory include a small guardaroba room, a dining area for pages, a credenza, pantry, dining area for the German guard, private kitchen of the duke, cellar, and shared kitchen located outside the palace. The shared 30 My sense of the typical spaces for food preparation, consumption, and domestic management has been drawn from various inventories, including ASF, GM 1084, 1135, 1463, 535, ASP, CCF, serie VIII, busta 52, fasc. 6, and ASP, FS, buste 809-10. 31 ASF, GM, 1463, “Inventari diversi 1588-1729 [Ambrogiana, Petrognano, Artimino, Cerreto]” registro 3 (1623). 74 kitchen contained approximately one-third of the tools and gadgets in the duke’s private kitchen, and, in this instance, the deployment of pots, pans, spits, and broiling pans is in direct relation to existing household hierarchies (Appendix C). The more valuable— and specialized—equipment was reserved for the use of the duke’s private cook in his private kitchen. Similarly, an inventory of Palazzo Pitti from 1638 illustrates how cooking and eating spaces were strictly regimented according to status as the document specifically enumerates a terrace kitchen, a kitchen underneath it, a room next to the private kitchen for a Signore Bernardo Gaenini (whose identity is unknown; perhaps the cuoco segreto for the Duke), a private kitchen for the ducal guard, another kitchen for the guard of the grand duchess, and a credenza for the general court guard. 32 Paralleling this strict spatial division was a corresponding assignment of kitchen equipment and tableware appropriate to the space and to the user of the object. For example, the tinello of the Farnese residence at Caprarola included a large dining table with seats that surround it, and were iron candelabras, smaller chestnut tables, a board for carving meat, as well as iron plates, salters, and cups (Appendix D). In these cases, the spaces devoted to preparing and serving food are minutely divided, with little overlap between areas used for the ducal table and for the lower levels of court staff. 33 32 ASF, GM, 535, “Inventario della Guardaroba di Pitti 1638.” Less expensive goods were kept in this functional space (there are no majolica plates, silver cups, or copper serving vessels). The communal kitchen contained items such as two 33 ASP, CCF, serie VIII, busta 52, fasc. 6. “Inventario de’Mobili in Caprarola, 1681, Inventario De Mobili Nel Palazzo di Caprarola di S A Ser.ma.” This room by room inventory lists the furnishings at the Farnese residence at Caprarola and provides useful evidence regarding the disbursement of kitchen goods throughout the household. 75 sideboard tables, a mortar and pestle, a wood fire oven, two warming pans, a free- standing spit-holder, and a wall-mounted spit-holder. The private kitchen, on the other hand, was filled with almost ten times as many objects including extremely specialized tools such as pots and pans, as well as chafing dishes, pastry tools, a copper pan for cooking eggs, cheese graters, mortars and pestles, ladles, basins, and molds. 34 This private kitchen housed the more specialized and costly tools for the experienced cuoco segreto. 35 Kitchen equipment and luxury tableware were deployed to specific kitchens or dining spaces in ways that shaped the structure and rhythm of court life on a daily basis. The patterns of limitation and the careful assignment of spaces and objects demonstrate yet another instance of culinary culture determining the framework of seventeenth-century court culture. The Medici and Farnese’s vast stores of furnishings and goods presented a significant challenge to the individuals charged with organization and maintenance. Seventeenth-century inventories range in their structure, as they might list the contents of a particular residence, the possessions of an individual, or the goods in possession of The Value of Kitchen Utensils 34 Several items are noted as being “broken” and “old” in the inventories for the both communal and private kitchens, a signal that the author was watching carefully for relative quality and state of repair for each item. 35 Another set of Farnese inventories catalog goods at the Caprarola palazzo in possession of Margherita de’Medici, Maria d’Este, Giovanna Beltrami, and other Farnese princesses (1672-92). A document cataloguing the silver items provides further confirmation of the hierarchical manner of storing and recording kitchen goods. The silver wares in the spice room, private kitchen, and credenze of the duke, guests, courtiers, and ladies of the court are all enumerated separately. The amount and relative quality of the silver goods are directly related to the social status of the persons using the space. ASP, CCF, Serie VIII, busta 52, fasc. 6. 76 the credenza. These documents all list the equipment and furnishings in conjunction with painting; independent inventories of paintings are not produced until the eighteenth century, reflecting a new privileging of the medium at that time. A Medici inventory dated from 1688-96 serves as an example of a compilation of objects according to their placement in the palace. 36 The inventory lists all the furniture, decorative objects, and paintings in the Palazzo Pitti room by room. It was written by officials of the guardaroba, in this case, a joint effort between Giuseppe del Nobolo, Maria Marmi (Guardaroba of Palazzo Pitti), and Antonio Citerni (Ministro della Guardaroba Generale). The list of goods presents a description of the item followed by the number of pieces or its weight; the objects include tables of varying sizes, chests, chairs, sheets, pillows, vases, tapestries, and maps. Amongst these items are both paintings and kitchen tools which are all recorded in the same document without differentiation. For example, an “iron pan with a wooden handle” is listed in the same manner as a painting “of wild and domestic animals, among them a pigeon cage covered by a taffeta or carpet, and a cat, and two dogs, in the fine Flemish manner with engraved frame.” 37 36 ASF, GM, 932, “Inventario di Palazzo Pitti, 13 gen. 1688-1696.” For more on the structure of the Palazzo Pitti, see Leon Satkowski, “The Palazzo Pitti: Planning and Use in the Grand-Ducal Era,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 42, no. 4 (December 1983): 336-49. Overall, this inventory provides a good overview (and is one example of many) of how the mid-seventeenth-century Medici court Guardaroba understood and recorded the astounding number of possessions kept at the Palazzo Pitti and, tellingly, cataloged 37 ASF, GM, 932. “Una padella di ferro con Manico di Legno” and “Un simile alto 3 ¼ largo 12 1/5 dipintori animali selvatici, e domestici, e fra questi una gabbia di Piccioni coperta da una taffeta anzi tappetto, et un gatto, e due cani: Maniera fiamminga buona con adornam.to intagliato…” Most references to paintings give the subject matter rather than the name of an artist; however, it seems that more well-known artists are recorded. 77 decorative objects, furniture, kitchen tools, and paintings all in the same fashion. This inclusion of kitchen equipment indicates its enormous value and equivalent status within the household. The Medici and Farnese possessed exhaustive stores of these valuable items ranging from sets of forks and knives to majolica plates to pastry cutters (Figures 1.4, 1.5, 1.6). Forks and knives came to be used widely in upper-class Italy in the sixteenth century, coinciding with the aristocratic classes’ new emphasis on cleanliness, civility, and elegance at the table. 38 The Medici and Farnese possessed numerous sets of forks and knives with handles of silver, iron, or gold, and these tools became opportunities to showcase precious metals and clever designs. Artisans produced elaborately designed pottery and china plates with mythological scenes, coats of arms, or other motifs for courtly tables. 39 For example, a set of plates was designed specifically for a Farnese banquet to be held with visiting Cardinals from Rome (but never produced). 40 38 The first recorded use of the fork was in Venice, in 1500. Claudio Paolini, I luoghi del cibo: Cucine, tinelli e sale da banchetto nella casa fiorentina tra XV e XVII secolo (Florence: Polistampa, 2004). Fewer kitchen tools are extant largely due to later generations’ collecting preferences for elaborately designed tableware but in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy, kitchen 39 On Renaissance majolica and pottery, see Timothy Wilson, Ceramic Art of the Italian Renaissance, exh. cat. (London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Publications, 1987); Wilson, Italian Maiolica of the Renaissance (Milan: Bocca, 1996); Luigi Mallé, Italian Maiolica: from its Origin to the 18th Century, Mary Lynn Reid Rossi, trans. ([n.p.]: Riunione adriatica di sicurtà; L’Assicuratrice italiana, 1974); Carmen Ravanelli Guidotti, ed., Maioliche italiane, exh. cat. (Florence: S.P.E.S., 1992); Giovanni Conti, L’arte della maiolica in Italia (Busto Arsizio: Bramante, 1980). 40 Maurizio dall’Acqua “I gigli e le api: Saggio di disegni farnesiani inediti per un servizio a tavola in età barocca,” in Nel segno del giglio: Ceramiche per i Farnese, exh. cat. (Viterbo: FAUL edizioni artistiche Viterbo, 1993), 81-100. On Medici pottery see Timothy Wilson, “Some Medici Devices on Pottery,” Faenza 120, no. 5-6 (1984): 433-40. 78 equipment was no less valuable. A pastry cutter made of silver is composed of a delicately spiraling handle that forms a loop for hanging on a wall, combining a refined form with a shape that met the needs of the kitchen (Figure 1.6). A Farnese residence might house goods for the table, such as small and large majolica plates, coasters, bed-warmers, pots, wine and broth cups as well as other items such as shallow terra cotta dishes, large pans of Florentine earthenware, crystal glassware, glass flasks for wine and perfumed water, and large lanterns. 41 Crystal glasses, silver and copper serving pieces, as well as a variety of forks and knives were destined for the ducal table. Alongside these items were iron, brass, copper, silver, pewter, earthenware, and wooden tools intended for use in the kitchen. For example, an alphabetical list in the Medici archive audits the contents of the kitchen and lists everything from goblets, brass dishes, tablecloths, forks, sieves and graters, attesting to the variety and specialized nature of kitchen tools (Appendix E). 42 Distinctions of social status are evident in these documents not only in the quantities of goods, but also in the archival language that clearly denotes both the 41 ASP, Casa e corte farnesiana, Serie VIII, busta 53, fasc. 1. “Inventari di materiali diversi (Palazzo del Giardino di Parma, della principessa Maria Maddalena, del Principe Odoardo.” An inventory of the Palazzo Giardino in Parma (1693) from the pantry of Maria Maddalena exemplifies a document assessing the possessions of an individual and focuses entirely on luxury tableware. This list, apparently completed upon her death, shows the varied styles and numbers of majolica tableware pieces required for the duchess’s use. 42 ASF, GM, 1429, “Revisioni diverse 1686-1736.” A document made up a collection of smaller booklets bound with string covers, “Six revisions of the administration of the tinello, kitchen, bottlery, and cooks and a list of linens given by the guardaroba administrator Vincenzo Riccardi to bottlers, kitchen workers and the master of the tinello,” provides a good counterpart to the listings of kitchen goods found in previous general inventories. One list is alphabetical (Appendix D) and another is a revision by Giovanni Sardi, a Medici cook. The identities of most Medici cooks are not known; they did not publish treatises as did other court cooks such as Scappi or Bartolomeo Stefani. Therefore, this identification of a specific cook is unusual. 79 quality and value of kitchen equipment, evinced by inventories from the Palazzo Pitti. 43 Alongside entries for items such as fourteen large iron carving forks and seven bone- handled, silver-ringed knives that are “broken and not of good quality” are the specific sizes of copper bottles “weighing between six and nine oncie.” 44 Like the knives, many items are noted as being broken or of inferior quality, but even these goods warrant counting in the inventory, underscoring the inherent value of the objects due to their valuable raw materials (bone, copper, silver) and utility in the household. Presumably, such items would be repaired or re-assigned to the communal kitchen or tinello. The arrangement of culinary spaces carefully aligned the quality of objects with the social status of their users. The hierarchical nature of households is evident not only in the structure of staff (with its head cooks, undercooks, assistants, and so on) but also in the inventoried kitchen tools and tableware, which are often qualified as being of “fine” or “poor” quality. 45 Like the quality of foodstuffs allotted to each member of court, the relative quality of tools and equipment entrusted to each individual was directly related to his or her expertise and position. 43 ASF, GM, 422, “Inventari di Palazzo Pitti, 1597- 12 lug. 1607.” The Circulation of Tools and Tableware 44 For more on the secondhand market for goods, see Evelyn Welch, "New, Old and Second-Hand Culture: The Case of the Renaissance Sleeve," in Revaluing Renaissance Art (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 101-19. 45 See Marta Ajmar-Wollheim, “Sociability,” in At Home in Renaissance Italy, ed. Marta Ajmar- Wollheim and Flora Dennis (London: V&A Publications, 2006), 208, for a discussion of differing types of chairs. Ajmar-Wollheim’s essay is an excellent introduction to the forms of domestic socializing that were newly experienced in Renaissance Italy. 80 It is evident that the spatial and material practices of culinary culture at court served to both create and reinforce social order. Exhaustively inventorying each item in the household rhetorically controlled the objects and their placement, and ostensibly ensured their security. The documentation of kitchen utensils and tableware provide insights into their relative value, increased specialization, circulation amongst the court, and placement alongside other furnishings, books, and works of art. As illustrated in the numerous engravings accompanying Scappi’s treatise, the ideal kitchen spaces were to be well-equipped with tools and gadgets ranging from tripods for hanging pots over a fire to fine ceramic serving dishes (Figures 2.14, 2.15, 2.16, and 2.17). Archival evidence indicates that courts such as the Medici and Farnese possessed a broad range of kitchen equipment, and that it was extremely valuable and worthy of careful, descriptive documentation. These costly objects were circulated widely throughout the court’s residences and, as we have seen, the stewards and other keepers were charged with accounting for each item. Kitchen officials created meticulous written systems for tracking the lending and return of the goods in hopes of preventing theft as well as limiting access to extremely precious items. Documents frequently record the kitchen goods and tableware as they were assigned in the care of a steward, cook, or pantry-keeper. An example of a 1633-51 credenza inventory illustrates the circulation and movement of household objects as well as their careful tracking from person to person (Appendix 81 F). 46 This inventory specifically catalogs items in the credenza, wherein the credenziere (in this case Antonio Migliorini) is charged with the upkeep and recording of plates, tableware, knives and other kitchen supplies. The inventory is organized as a set of lists of items under the care of various members of the household staff who have borrowed the supplies for their duties. For example, the largest number of items is shown to be in the care of Migliorini, “per servizio della Credenza,” showing his immense responsibility for these items. Later in the document, other servants’ charged items are listed along with the member of court to which they will be in service, reinforcing the notion that objects of a certain quality are destined only for use and possession by members of the ducal family and that domestic officials were mere caretakers of the wares. The goods charged to them include many numbered table and kitchen tools, linens and furniture, such as ten decorated silver candlesticks, a gilded vase, silver salt-cellar, eleven silver spoons and eleven silver forks, twelve knives and twelve forks for carving, a stamped leather table cover, two walnut chairs with folded covers of red sumac, a pan for the fire, a grater, and a tray for eating in bed. 47 46 ASF, GM, 466, “Inventario della Credenza, 1 sett. 1633-1651.” Titled “Inventory of the silver and ceramics consigned in service to the Credenza.” A second part of this document includes an inventory of items in the Tinello or communal dining area for the servants and officials of the court. Several religious paintings are listed as hanging in this space including a Madonna and Christ carrying the cross, and they are not differentiated from the other objects such as knives, candlesticks, and plates. This document gives each individual’s name and title, followed by the goods they have checked out, perhaps to encourage greater accountability in the care of these valuable 47 Ibid., “Dieci Candellieri dg.l tutti lavorati; Un salierino dag.to dorati a vasetto; Undici Cuchiai e’ undici forchetti dag.l; Dodici Cultelli e dodici forchette di Trinciare; Un sopra tavolino di corame tondo; dua seggiole di noce di si ripiegano Coperte di sommaco rosso; da padelle che una da bruciate; da grattugie a Casetta; Un tavolino di noce da mangiare all'letto.” 82 items. This contrasts to other court documents which list the provisions and salary allotted to each titled position rather than to named individuals. The inventory’s lists of borrowed goods begin with headings such as this one: “Salvestro Salvestrini Credenziere of his royal highness must return the following goods assigned to him in the presence of Filippo Doni for the service of the serene prince Gian Carlo.” 48 The pages are divided in half with a vertical line, with borrowed items enumerated on the left and a note of their restitution on the right. Another example highlights the detail with which the items were recorded: “Maria Vespucci in service of his highness must return the following items taken for his table: a silver spoon and fork, a knife with gilded handle, and two linen napkins.” 49 48 Ibid., “Salvestro Salvestrini Credenziere d’SAS deve dare le appie robe Rasegniatoli in sua mano alla presentia del sig. Filippo Doni per servire al Ser.mo P. Gian Carlo e prima.” While the knife was not returned in this case, most of the other items are indicated as having been returned. A variety of household positions are represented—Cuocho segreto, Maestro di Tinello, Bottiglieri—and the officials borrow the tools and items relevant to their position. For instance, the person in charge of the tinello, or servant’s dining room, might borrow primarily tin and copper plates where the Duke’s cook takes silver and gold tableware. Overall, this document provides evidence of the movement of household objects from servant to servant and amongst different members of the 49 Ibid., “Maria Vespucci di Camera di SAS deve dare le appie robbe datoli per la sua tavola: Un cucchiaio e una forchetta darg.to, Un Cultello di manicha doro, Dua salviette di rensa.” 83 court. 50 The tremendous value of such items is clear in the meticulous recording and documentation of their circulation, and these strict controls underline the significance of the ducal possessions and of the use of differentiated tools for dining. 51 Furthermore, visiting guests and their service staff might travel with their own serving utensils, pots, and linens, but would frequently need to borrow items from the court’s stores to complete their tables. Medici-owned kitchen equipment and tableware often would be deployed in the service of visiting guests, and documents show that such goods were borrowed and returned through a meticulous system of textual documentation. For example, a Medici inventory of 1654-70 both confirms the patterns of constant lending and circulation of kitchen and tableware amongst princely households and evinces the continuous flow of guests requiring meals at court. 52 50 For more information on the movement of goods within a Renaissance court as well as an in-depth study of such items at the 16 th century Gonzaga court, see Valerie Taylor, “Drawings, Dining, and Display in Mantua, 1500-1550” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Sussex, 2006). The document records plates, napkins, tablecloths, and silverware lent out to various persons in service of individuals or the needs of a villa residence. Entries even as small as one 51 ASF, GM, 498, “Inventario della Credenza, 1 dic. 1637 – 6 dic 1637.” A similar Credenza inventory dated to 1637 is also divided by household staff members and the items they possess; for example, the cuoco segreto, cuoco di cucina comune and bottigliere are represented. Each individual’s items are listed (including the weight of the objects), and the borrowers have signed the inventory guaranteeing their care and return of the items, for example, Francesco Fontani’s (cook for the Grand Duchess) signed validation at the bottom of the list. 52 ASF, GM, 983, “Debitori e creditori 14 feb. 1654- 11 ago. 1670.” “Sig. Benedetto Guerrini deve dare al Tinello di SAS l'appie robe di stagno e biancherie ricevute per servitio della sua Tavola e rimetterla al suo senzo levo il suo servtio sino l'anno corso 1653 e prima” 84 plate are meticulously recorded, and most are marked out with a diagonal slash, presumably to indicate the safe return of the items. 53 The words of a newly appointed master of the tinello in a document dated 1603- 06 from the Medici archives further highlights the particular importance of household officers keeping strict control over kitchen and dining goods. The supervisor of the tinello (servants’ dining quarters) included a lengthy missive in which he sought to differentiate himself from his predecessor by claiming a deep sense of responsibility for the goods entrusted to him. The previous supervisor “had lent the items without regard for those that would borrow and return them in good condition, and when it went badly he could not take account...” 54 53 A 1638 inventory includes a listing of items that are at the Villa di Careggi in service of the visiting ambassador of Spain, another example of the movement of valuable household goods around the various Medici properties. ASF, GM, 535, “Inventario della Guardaroba di Pitti 1638.” The following pages then enumerate items that were lost under the unfortunate predecessor, Giovanni Battista Malacarne, and contain strongly worded promises by the new tinello-master to avoid such losses through careful record- keeping and monitoring of who borrowed which items. The list of missing items from the previous twenty-one years included a staggering 3,227 silver plates, 58 silver forks, 7 silver salt cellars, 49 spoons, 8,351 napkins, 924 dinner knives, and 20 carving knives. These massive numbers point to the notion that the rhetoric of these inventories and record-keeping systems may have belied the actual conditions, which were presumably rather chaotic. Despite this, the domestic officials created an active system to guard against the theft and loss of extremely valuable goods and reinforced this system in 54 ASF, MM, 11, inserto 4. “...gli habbia dare la Roba senza tenere conto per parola dare prestare a chi li tornia bene, et quando va male non ne possa vedere Conto...” 19 d’ottobre, 1603. 85 order to maintain their own self-preservation and job security. Prescriptive literature for majordomos and stewards touted qualities such as loyalty and honesty as essential for all court offices, and it is clear that the keepers of the duke’s furnishings took pains to paint themselves as such in official documentation. Courts possessed sumptuous and specialized kitchen equipment and housed the individuals with the expertise to properly utilize and care for them. These domestic officials argued for their masterful skill and importance via textual and visual representations. By performing their knowledge in the durable, collectible, and luxurious format of an illustrated book, these cooks, stewards, and carvers accomplished several maneuvers. They flattered their patrons by presenting skills and expertise and recording banquet recipes and banquet menus, and, at the same time, ensured the centrality of kitchen officials for the proper functioning of a court. The final section of this chapter illuminates the Medici, Farnese, and Sanvitale’s collection of culinary treatises along with specialized kitchen tools, still life paintings, and other literary, philosophical, religious, and humanist books. This establishment of an aristocratic readership for the treatises will be leveraged in the next chapter to better understand the functions the text and image in the books. Culinary Treatises in Court Libraries The demands on extravagant ducal hospitality to match that of more powerful Renaissance courts across Europe required a significant expenditure by the Medici and Farnese courts. The social, political, and cultural capital obtained through the proper 86 hosting of visiting guests along with the lavish celebration of marriages, political appointments, and deaths was essential to the sustenance of the ducal families. Thus, a specialized culinary culture not only supported the courts’ mission, but also became the principal locus of enforcing ducal power and social hierarchies. This culinary culture should not be characterized as simply lavish or extravagant; rather, a deeply nuanced assignment of duties (for stewards, cooks, pantry-keepers and pages) emerged that was reflected in and supported by the hierarchies of specialized spaces and materials associated with cooking and eating. Actual stewards, cooks, and carvers authored culinary treatises, preserving their skills, recipes, and menus in text and image. Such texts were widely printed and reprinted, suggesting their popularity and marketability, but it is difficult to surmise the social status or occupation of those who purchased and read the books. 55 55 Some of the most frequently reprinted (in early modern Italy only) include: Cristoforo Messisbugo, Cristoforo, Banchetti compositioni di vivande, et apparecchio general (Ferrara, 1539, reprinted 11 times); Domenico Romoli, La singolare dottrina (Venice, 1560, reprrinted 7 times); Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570, reprinted 9 times); Vincenzo Cervio, Il trinciante (Venice, 1581, reprinted 4 times); Cesare Evitascandolo, Dialogo del mastro di casa and Libro dello scalco (both books Rome, 1596, reprinted more than 7 times). Existing scholarship has not produced substantial evidence of the identities of these readers. Introductory texts from many of the treatises claim that their goals are to instruct the reader, presumably an apprentice or lower-level official, but the presence of such books in ducal collections indicates a more nuanced picture of the readership and reception of these texts. Scappi’s text, groundbreaking in its extensive content and illustration, was one of the most widely published recipe books. Ducal and aristocratic libraries 87 collected the book, and, owing to this, I surmise that other culinary treatises were collected by courts as well. In Parma, a Sanvitale inventory from 1671 of items retrieved after the death of Count Obizzo lists a range of objects including copper bed warmers, cooking basins, and pans as well as pewter tools such as basins and plates, and also records newly fashionable items such as hot chocolate makers and coffee makers. 56 Books and paintings follow, including a copy of Giorgio Vasari’s Vite, large and small paintings of religious subjects, amongst iron items such as fireplace tools, majolica plates, and more books including sonnets and Scappi’s treatise on cooking. The entry directly following the listing for Scappi’s book is for two large paintings on canvas with white poplar frames depicting “various items to eat, of fat and lean days.” 57 56 ASP, FS, serie XIX, busta 809-810, “Inventario de Mobili ritrovati doppo la Morte del Sig. Conte Obizzo Sanvitale qui in Parma.” The residence also housed several other painted series of fruit and butcher shops as well as more religious subjects such as the penitent Magdalene. The Sanvitale palazzo displayed a series of eight fruit paintings “with various items of fat and lean days,” another set of similar works, and housed a white marble mortar, chains for the fire, a knife and a pasta-dough scraper, earthenware wine flask, an “old” kitchen fork, a cheese knife, and cooking 57 Ibid. The portion of the list of books and paintings including Scappi’s treatise reads as follows: “Altro [libro], che tratta di Cucina di Bartl.mo Scappi; Due quadri grandi stessi con sue cornice di pioppa bianche, e con entro dipinto in tela diverse robbe di mangiare di grasso e magro; Due altri piu piccioli stesi con cornici simili, ed entro dipinto come sopra in tela frutti, e becheria; Due paesi con Santi sopra, e sua cornici nera ci ciascuno; Un quadro con cornice nera rapresentate in tela la Visitazione di S. Elisabetta; Altro simile alto rapresentante S. Maria Madalenna penitent; Quattro fruttiere piccole con cornice bianca. Altro simile con s.a un Paese.” 88 knife. 58 These courts employed skilled cooks and stewards, kept well-stocked kitchens and pantries, hung luxurious paintings of foods on their walls, and, as archival documents demonstrate, possessed culinary treatises in their library collections. Copper, iron, earthenware, and silver goods were essential components of an aristocratic kitchen, and the market for this increasingly specialized equipment was paralleled by a booming market for culinary treatises and recipe collections. After examination and analysis of book inventories found in the Medici, Farnese, and Sanvitale archives, this discussion of culinary texts situates these books more broadly in the world of early modern print. The presence of Scappi’s treatise alongside humanist, medical, religious, and philosophical texts in aristocratic households evinces a readership far outside the kitchen. Culinary treatises—while purporting to provide concrete instruction on recipes and banquet planning for officials in training—were actually collected by the same dukes and aristocrats that their authors served. Obizzo Sanvitale’s household in Parma not only daily enacted the rituals of culinary culture, but also collected its textual and visual representations—from Scappi’s illustrated book to still life paintings of foodstuffs. Scappi’s Opera and other culinary texts were held in ducal libraries alongside works of theology, humanism, literature, and natural philosophy indicates that culinary treatises did not occupy a separate realm—they were not consigned to the kitchen but circulated with other forms of knowledge. The fact that such books went on to reside in 58 The designations “fat” and “lean” relate to the Church calendar. Magro (lean) days included periods of fasting, Lent, and other somber religious days and only fish and vegetables were allowed. Grasso (fat) days included festivals, and all types of foods were permitted. 89 these collections would indicate that the authors were successful in ensuring a high stature for their professions. The seventeenth-century Sanvitale library housed a copy of Scappi’s Opera along with religious texts, the Bible, commentaries on Virgil and other ancient authors, lives of contemporary figures and treatises on the French language. 59 Books of literature (Torquato Tasso), medicine (an illustrated anatomy book), and culinary information (treatises on the nutritional value of chocolate) all occupied the same space of the library. 60 The Farnese ducal library in Parma did not own a copy of Scappi or Giegher’s texts (according to extant records), but its collections are illustrative of the many iterations of textual culinary knowledge across genres. This offers valuable evidence for the collection of books such as Scappi’s in aristocratic and princely private collections. These libraries sought to possess the scope of human knowledge and experience, and authors like Scappi ensured a place for culinary expertise in this paradigm. 61 59 ASP, FS, busta 811a, inventari mazzo II, “Inventario de Libri consegnati dal Sre. Ravizza al Sig. Fran.co Ghigiotti Agente. del Ecc.ma Casa Sanvitale.” The Farnese owned many texts by Galen, other books of medicine and natural philosophy, agriculture, the New 60 Other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books in this record include: Francis Bacon, Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato, Cassieri’s Historia anatomica (a lavishly illustrated work), Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Flaminio della Croce’s Esercizio della Cavalleria, Pietro Crescenzi’s Trattato della nobilità, Dante, Italian-German and Italian-Spanish dictionaries, Pirro Antonio Ferraro’s Cavallo freneto, Gio. Battista Gudenfridi’s Differenza tra il Cibo, e il Ciocolate, Tomaso Garzoni’s Piazza Universale, Guerrara, Antonio de Cortegiani, Girolamo Lunadoro’s Della Corte di Roma, Scipione Maffei’s Giunte alla scienza cavalleresca, Pompei Sacci, Medicina, Lorenzo Scupoli, Combattimento spirituale, and various works of Torquato Tasso, Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera divisa in sei libri. No publication information is included in the listing. 61 ASN, Archivio Farnesiano, busta 1853 I, no. IV, “Inventario di libri Farnesiani, descritti secondo l’ordine degli armadi della gran Biblioteca Ducale di Parma,” perhaps from 1690. Publication information and dates are given in this inventory, and the text is ordered by the bookcases which were held in a large room, organized loosely by topic. 90 World, and works on the nature of courtly life such as Giovanni della Casa’s Galateo (Florence, 1561). Other relevant items containing culinary information included in the library were: Apicius, De re culinaria libri decem (Lyon, 1541); Gulilmi Rodeleti De Ponderibus (Lyon, 1560), Conrad Gesneri De Quadrupedibus (Zurich, 1551); Dioscorides De Medica materia (Florence, 1523); Pietro Crescentio Dell’Agricoltura (Florence, 1605); Thome Grosii De Aere, Cibo, Potu (Venice, 1617); treatises on agriculture by Carlo Stefani, Agostino Gallo, and Pietro Crescentio; Vasari’s Vite (Florence, 1550); and various other texts on geography, cosmography, geometry, and courtly life. The interest in collecting books of natural philosophy, history, and medicine alongside works dealing with cookery and courtly manners underscores the central role of culinary literature for both elevating the art of food production as well as exploring of concepts of experimentation, authority, and man’s relationship with the natural world. At the same time, luxurious culinary treatises in many ways modeled themselves after treatises associated with the cultures of natural philosophy and natural history, as I will discuss in the next two chapters. Extant stamps in copies of Giovanni Battista Rossetti’s Dello scalco (Ferrara, 1584) and Cesare Evitascandalo’s Libro dello scalco (Rome, 1609) show that these works were a part of the Medici grandducal library in the Palazzo Pitti. 62 62 et coquatur ponendo...: cultura della cucina e della tavola in Europa tra medioevo ed età moderna (Prato: Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica "Francesco Datini", 1996) Catalogue #359, 360. Aristocratic ownership of culinary literature was also present in England, where books such as Girolamo Ruscelli’s Secrets of the Reverand Maister Alexis of Piedmont (London, 1558)—a book of “secrets” that included cosmetic and health remedies as well as instructions for sugar sculpture—were housed in aristocratic book collections. See Gilly Lehman, “The Cook as Artist?” Food in the Arts: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1998, ed. Harlan Walker (Totnes, Devon: Prospect Books, 1998): 125-33. While it is 91 difficult to determine if actual cooks or stewards working at the Medici court read such texts, it is reasonable to conclude that they may have had access to the books based on the rising status of kitchen positions. As top-level domestic officials enjoyed more free access to the restricted spaces of a courtly residence (and were frequently members of the aristocracy), they likely would have been able to utilize ducal libraries. However, we may also surmise that the books might have been enjoyed by an aristocratic reader who would never perform any of the duties enumerated by the didactic treatises. Perhaps this aristocratic reader may be compared to an “armchair traveler” to the highly specialized milieus of cooks, carvers, and stewards, a concept that will be explored further in the next chapter. Therefore, books ostensibly aiming to instruct cooks and stewards also sought to assert the importance and complexity of their craft to courtly readers and diners. Outside the court context in seventeenth-century Florence, an aristocratic musician named Giovanni del Turco collected treatises on cooking, domestic remedies, and alchemy and then compiled and transcribed partitions of them in manuscript. 63 63 Giovanni del Turco, Epulario e segreti vari: trattati di cucina Toscana nella Firenze seicentesca (1602-1636), ed. Anna Evangelista (Bologna: Arnaldo Forni Editore, 1992). Drawing from Scappi and others, this culinary amateur combined the work of professionals to create his own collection of recipes. Again, this reader was not a working cook and thus, we may extrapolate an audience for culinary literature that included princes, librarians, and aristocrats. Given the strict restrictions on access to culinary spaces in courtly residences, we may intimate similar exclusions from ducal libraries, indicating that lower levels of household officials (such as maids or stable- 92 keepers) may not have had access to such collections but that elite stewards, cooks, and carvers may have been able to consult the works. This further reinforced court hierarchies and prevented social mobility, as the undercooks, assistants, or servants were prevented access from the texts that ostensibly could teach them the skills and knowledge needed to rise to the upper echelon of culinary practice. Therefore, the texts came to record the ephemeral, elevate the status of kitchen professionals, and display the “behind-the-scenes” creation of lavish banquets of their patrons for curious, elite readers. The courts’ collection of printed culinary treatises opens up into a new line of questioning for the purpose and meaning if text and image in books like Scappi’s Opera and Giegher’s Tre trattati. The deployment and control of culinary culture was a substantial, sustained undertaking for ducal courts and their staffs, out of which emerged a rich textual and visual culture that ensured the centrality of an ever- expanding and specializing culinary realm. 93 Figure 1.1: Matteo Greuter, Convito, engraving from Camillo Rinuccini, Descrizione delle feste fatte nelle reali nozze de' Serenissimi principi di Toscana d. Cosimo de' Medici, e Maria Maddalena arcidvchessa d'Avstria (Florence: i Giunti, 1608). Unfolded from book with detail. Getty Research Institute, Special Collections ID# 2561-189 94 Figure 1.2: Detail, Matteo Greuter, Convito, engraving from Camillo Rinuccini, Descrizione delle feste fatte nelle reali nozze de' Serenissimi principi di Toscana d. Cosimo de' Medici, e Maria Maddalena arcidvchessa d'Avstria (Florence: i Giunti, 1608). Getty Research Institute, Special Collections ID# 2561-189 95 Figure 1.3: Drawing depicting a banquet, with Ottavio Farnese, 16 th century. Archivio di Stato di Parma, Mappe e disegni, No. 66/310 96 Figure 1.4: Knife, fork and spoon, Silver and rock crystal, Venice, 16 th century, Museo Correr, Musei Civici Veneziani, Venice 97 Figure 1.5: Drawings for a series of dinner plates designed for Odoardo Farnese (1612– 1640) in preparation for a meal with Cardinals Antonio and Francesco Barberini from Rome, 1639, Parma, Biblioteca Palatina 98 Figure 1.6: Pastry cutter, Iron, Italian, 17 th century, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 99 Chapter 2 Constructing Culinary Knowledge in Image and Text Books purporting to teach their readers a vast range of culinary and domestic skills proliferated in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy (Appendix A). 1 As this chapter will show, tensions exist between these books’ didactic claims and their actual effectiveness as teaching tools. The presentation of text and image in culinary books alludes to several functions for this genre of literature. In order to understand these works, their audience must be identified. As demonstrated by the According to the authors (working cooks, stewards, and carvers), a reader could learn the complex organizational skills needed to maintain a large kitchen, how to butcher and prepare animals for roasting, bake vegetables into a pie, combine ingredients in a pleasing manner, oversee domestic staffs, arrange a banquet table, prepare meals for the sick, performatively carve meats for a duke, and even shape napkins into boats or castles. These books on cookery, household management, banquet preparation, and the nutritional properties of foodstuffs were extremely popular, enjoying decades of reprinting and widespread circulation. The books are richly evocative and sometimes illustrated, describing in text and image a culture of conspicuous consumption and culinary performance. The recipes and menus are redolent of the heady combinations of ingredients and spices that shaped the courtly appetite. 1 For an introductory gathering of excerpts of the culinary texts see Emilio Faccioli, Arte della cucina: Libri di ricette (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1966). 100 evidence that culinary texts were found in ducal libraries and an aristocratic readership, such books reached an audience far outside the kitchen. In addition to the high-status domestic officials who had written treatises themselves or those that may have had access to ducal book collections or even, I argue that aristocratic, non-practicing (or aspiring) readers enjoyed the vicarious pleasures offered by these culinary books. 2 Two of the most lavishly illustrated books, Bartolomeo Scappi’s Opera (first published in Venice, 1570) and Mattia Giegher’s Li tre trattati (Padua, the three treatises first published together in 1629 and again in 1639) demonstrate the ways that these texts performed and solidified an elite, idealized culinary culture and in so doing, offered a glimpse into aristocratic court life for their readers. The reading and viewing of representations of culinary culture were pleasurable activities that ensured a market for the books. Offering guidelines for the conduct of a cook, recipes, menus, and twenty-seven engraved illustrations of kitchen utensils and interiors, Scappi’s book quickly became foundational and helped establish norms for a genre of culinary literature. The slightly later Giegher book offers a useful point of comparison, as it Knowledge gastronomic matters had become a sign of prestige and owning such books was likely a sign of sophistication and refinement. The publication of these books represents (successful) efforts of cooks, stewards, and carvers to professionalize their trade and ensure their continued patronage in a courtly milieu. 2 Scholars have argued otherwise, including Robert Appelbaum, who writes about Scappi, “the reader – though this primary reader must also be the major domo at a princely household, since none other would be equipped to follow Scappi’s instructions – has only to follow the system to reproduce equally authoritative cookery.” Robert Appelbaum, Aguecheek’s Beef, Belch’s Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections: Literature, Culture, and Food Among the Early Moderns (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 98. 101 directly addresses the role of the scalco and trinciante and teaches the skills of napkin folding, table setting, and meat carving through both text and image. Culinary literature in the early modern period was a fluid category; information about food and cooking can be found in a variety of books including treatises on cooking, household management, meat-carving, medicine, pharmaceuticals, herbals, religion, and agriculture. This chapter outlines examples of treatises written by—and ostensibly directed to—cooks, stewards, and carvers. The Scappi and Giegher texts and images codify and express the skills of their craft using visual and organizational tropes that echo natural philosophy books. The engravings highlight tensions inherent in “teaching” physical skills through the relatively new medium of print. Therefore, I argue that the books functioned not as practical “how-to” guides for the highly specialized arts of cooking and presenting food but rather defined a significant cultural and social role for the emerging art and science of gastronomy. In light of my archival research on the collection of these books in ducal and aristocratic libraries, I argue that the Scappi and Giegher books employ text and engraved images to enact the transformation of domestic officials into elevated masters. Next, I closely examine the engravings in the first edition of Scappi’s Opera, showing how the images of kitchens and tools are carefully constructed to project order, security, and expertise. I demonstrate parallels between culinary literature and books of natural history and philosophy to explore not only ideological similarities but also ways that cooks, stewards, and carvers aligned themselves with the practices of other prestigious experts. I conclude with Giegher’s diagrammatic illustrations that range from half-carved pigs to 102 whimsically folded napkins and serve to reaffirm the talents of the master. Both sets of engravings deny the physicality of kitchen labor—the reality of plucking chickens, controlling smoky fires, or peeling onions is left behind in favor of an idealized vision of luxurious, well-organized and clean kitchens, tools, and actions. This particular mode of representing culinary culture would certainly be both appealing and reassuring to the elite audience for the books. My close reading of the Scappi and Giegher illustrations reveals that they are carefully constructed to present the spaces, tools, and tasks of courtly culinary culture as orderly and specialized, and, in so doing, construe its practitioners as authorities. The widespread popularity and influence of Scappi’s Opera are evident in the number of editions produced: the first in 1570 and the eighth (and final) in 1643. His treatise was organized into six sections: the first book provided advice for the cook, and the second discussed meats, especially those of four-legged animals. The third presented Lenten recipes for fish, the fourth offered banquet menus for all seasons, the fifth contained instructions for making pastry, and the sixth discussed appropriate meals and menus for convalescents. Each book is divided into chapters; the chapters are then listed in a table of contents at the end of the section, with their accompanying page numbers. This allows the reader easily to reference or return to particular recipes or sections which suggests that the book was in some sense intended as a very practical reference book or manual, a sort of textual maestro on which an aspiring or practicing Scappi, Giegher, and the Market for Culinary Expertise 103 cook could rely. Overall the text consisting of lists, recipes, and menus, demonstrates a concerted effort to record and codify Scappi’s years of experience and experimentation in the kitchen for the benefit of his readers. Scappi’s reference work exploits the possibilities of the printed book for organizing and making accessible large quantities of information. The reader can easily reference recipes and menus via the tables of contents and can identify kitchen implements through the illustrations. This printed book functions therefore both as a didactic tool instructing the reader as though he were an apprentice and a reference work classifying and codifying recipes and utensils. However, given the book’s aristocratic readership, the illustrations also functioned as a visual inventory of the costly implements needed to operate a large court kitchen. The precise details of Mattia Giegher’s life are uncertain, though it is known that he was Bavarian and served as a steward for German law students at the University of Padua. 3 His book features a portrait of master scalco, mustachioed and somber, framed with coats of arms including one with fork and knife. On the title page of the 1639 edition, the three treatises are divided as such: the first is devoted to the art of napkin folding, the second to seasonal menus and table setting, and the third to the proper carving of meat and fish. 4 3 Stefanie Walker, “The Art of Napkin Folding in Baroque Italy,” Society of Fellows News, American Academy in Rome (2005): 12. Unlike Scappi, Giegher does not record recipes; instead his 4 However, in the edition housed at the Getty Research Institute (ID: 1561-566), the treatises are bound in a different order; first is the treatise on carving, second, napkin folding, and, third menus and presentation. The images are in a different order as well: first those corresponding to the menus, second to napkin folding, and third to carving. Giegher’s Lo scalco and Il trinciante were first published separately in 1621 and 1623 (Padua), respectively, before being combined with the banquet menus and published as Li tre trattati (Padua, 1629). Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1629; Reprint, Reprint: Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1989), n.p. 104 work explicitly addresses the staging of a meal. The text repeatedly touts the inclusion of the copper engravings as a novel contribution of the author. The title page claims: In the first book, it is shown with great ease the way to fold every sort of linen, that is, tablecloths, and napkins and how to set a table…these are all represented in figures of copper engraving: and this is a new invention of the author, and has not yet ever been seen. The second, titled lo Scalco, besides teaching the knowledge of all the best seasons for foods, will clearly show the manner of putting foods on the table, with three different images of tables engraved in copper. In the third, called il Trinciante, it teaches the way to carve every sort of food, with the images similarly in copper… 5 This emphasis on the utility of illustrations for the work indicates their centrality; indeed, they are presented with great pride. However, the ability of an inexperienced reader to actually follow these illustrations and successfully fold napkins or carve fruit is questionable at best. I will evaluate the function of the images in Giegher’s text as didactic tools for communicating the skills needed for manual tasks—analysis of the illustrations shows the near-impossibility of replicating Giegher’s promised outcomes. Rather, the composition of the images reaffirms the skill and knowledge of the master- author by “performing” complex feats of manual dexterity. There is often overlap in the content of books aimed at cooks and stewards, but a distinctive literature for the roles of the steward and carver emerged as early as 1543 with Francesco Priscianese’s Trattato del governo della corte di un signore in Roma (Rome, 1543). The scalco had to possess the organizational skills needed to supervise 5 Giegher, Li tre trattati. “Nel primo si mostra con facilita’ grande il modo di piegare ogni sorte di panni lini, cioe, faluiette, e tovaglie, e d’apparecchiare una tavola, con certe alter galanterie degno d’esser sapute; le quali cose tutte son rappresentate in figure di rame: e questa e’ invenzione del tutto nuova dell’autore, ne mai piu’ per addietro veduta. Nel secondo, intitolato lo Scalco, s’insegna, oltr’al conoscere le stagioni di tutte le cose che si mangiano, la maniera di mettere in tavola le vivande; il che, con tre differenti figure di tavole intagliate in rame, chiaramente si mostra. Nel terzo, detto il Trinciante, si’insegna il modo di trinciare ogni sorte di vivande, con le sue figure medesimamente in rame; opera rinuovata, e di molte cose accresciuta.” 105 supplies and personnel, organize banquets, and plan menus along with the aesthetic and artisinal skills to carve meat, fold napkins, and arrange a pleasing table. At the same time, he must conduct himself as a gentleman and courtier. Cesare Evitascandalo’s Libro dello Scalco offers a good example of the rhetoric used to highlight the fundamental importance of the scalco and the need for him to be knowledgeable of the cook’s work as well: The Steward should know what a prepared dish is, and what it is made of, so that he can explain, if he is asked, whether a tangy garnish is made with vinegar or something else, or whether a sweet one is made with sugar or honey; in the roast course he should be able to tell the difference between a thrush and a blackbird, a suckling calf and a grazing calf, a fig-eater or some other small bird; and the same with a great many other fowl and animals, both wild and domestic. Whoever wishes to exercise that most honorable profession must have had long practical experience in kitchen matters and have taken pleasure at seeing and learning all that is associated with a good cook, so that he himself can organize and be competent. 6 This steward, scalco, or maestro di casa evidently practiced a demanding, managerial profession that was not only responsible for the cooks and servers but also oversaw (and sometime performed the duties of) the prominent figure of the carver, or trinciante. The carver was responsible for carving and dividing the cooked foods at the table, including meats, fish, bread and fruit. In 1581, the first text devoted exclusively to the artful carving of meats, fish, and vegetables, Vincenzo Cervio’s Il trinciante, was published in Venice. 7 6 Cesare Evitascandalo, Libro dello scalco (Rome, 1609), Quoted in Bartolomeo Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi: L’arte et prudenza d’un maestro cuoco, trans. Terence Scully (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 664. In a later edition, small woodcuts illustrate a title page for Vincenzo Cervio’s Il trinciante (Venice, 1662) and show the established method of 7 Vincenzo Cervio, Il Trinciante (Venice, 1581; Reprint: Sala Bolognese: A. Forni, 1980). 106 carving meat high above the table, balanced on a knife (Figure 2.1). The role of the carver combined performance and food service often in a most entertaining fashion. While these rather schematic scenes do not allow for significant detail, they do alert the reader to the contents of the book. The publisher Alessandro Vecchi used the same woodcuts to illustrate the title pagekof an edition of Scappi’s text of the same year (Figure 2.2). The re-use of these images was a publishing technique employed to help promote the books and establish a shared market for them. Cervio’s treatise serves as a helpful example in understanding how publishers combined various treatises and authors in different editions. 8 After Cervio’s death, his colleague, Reale Fusoritto da Narni, published the treatise in 1681. Narni later (in 1593) appended several additions to the text, including his own work and a dialogue with Cesare Pandini, a maestro di casa. 9 The binding together of several related texts indicates an active market for such works as well as a desire on the part of authors and publishers to include a seemingly comprehensive set of treatises in one edition. In another example, a 1604 edition of Scappi’s Opera is bound with Cervio’s text as well as Pandini’s Mastro di casa. 10 8 This tendency is in line with Adrian Johns’s argument about the exaggerated notion of “fixity” in early modern print. Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). A 1662 book printed by the same publishing house, Alessandro Vecchi in Venice, also pairs Cervio and Pandini’s texts. 9 Gillian Riley, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 112. 10 Scappi, Opera di m. Bartolomeo Scappi, cuoco secreto di papa Pio quinto, diuisa in sei libri ... Ristampata con due aggiunte, cioè; il Trinciante, & il Mastro di casa. Con le figure che fan bisogno nella cucina & alli Reuerendissimi nel conclaue (Venice: Alessandro Vecchi, 1605). BNCF, MAGL 4.7.2. See also BNCF MAGL 3.1.478 for a edition that binds together Vittorio Lancellotti’s Lo scalco prattico di Vittorio Lancellotti da Camerino (Rome: Francesco Corbelletti, 1627) , Cesare Evitascandalo’s Libro dello scalco (Rome: Carlo Vullietti, 1609), and Dialogo del trenciante (Rome, Carlo Vullietti, 1609). 107 The many combinations and editions of Cervio’s carving treatise shows the ingenuity of book sellers and publishers in marketing the books. 11 A brief examination of the other types of works that Scappi and Giegher’s publishers released shows the development of a market for culinary literature among an elite, book-buying audience. 12 Michele and Francesco Tramezzino, the first publishers of Scappi’s book, were identified as book dealers and worked in conjunction between Rome and Venice as successful publishers, producing medical, historical, and practical books. 13 In 1560, the Tramezzini published steward Domenico Romoli’s La singular dottrina (Venice, 1560), which was apparently met with commercial success as it was reprinted ten years later (and five times after that). 14 11 Elizabeth Eisenstein’s seminal work—and Adrian Johns’s revision of her thesis—shapes my conception of early modern print culture. For an introduction to Italian publishing houses see Brian Richardson, Printing, Writers, and Readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Edoardo Barbieri and Danilo Zardin, eds., Libri, biblioteche e cultura nell'Italia del Cinque e Seicento (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 2002). Perhaps the reception of this work convinced the Tramezzini not only to agree to publish Scappi’s work, but also to commission the twenty-seven fine copperplate engravings to accompany it (the scope of which was unprecedented for culinary and domestic treatises). In Padua, Paolo Frambotto also commissioned expensive plates for Giegher’s treatise. Frambotto maintained a steady 12 The anachronistic term “publisher” is often applied to printers and other individuals who might be engaged in a variety of activities of including locating authors, editing, typesetting, printing, marketing, and selling books. Publishing houses and printing presses were often operated by families rather than individuals. Michael Bury, The Print in Italy 1550-l620 exh. cat. (London: The British Museum Press, 2001). 13 Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe, Copyright in the Renaissance: Prints and the Privilegio in Sixteenth- Century Venice and Rome (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 112-22. On the Tramezzini, see Alberto Tinto, Annali tipografici dei Tramezzino (Rome and Venice: Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 1966) and Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, 78-80. 14 After the Tramezzino brothers’ death, their heirs later published Vincenzo Cervio’s Il trinciante (Venice, 1581). 108 output of literary, historical, and scientific books, including many editions of a popular book on papal court rituals, Girolamo Lunadoro’s Relatione della corte di Roma (Padua, 1635). For readers, the pleasures of a glimpse into the elite, wealthy, and orderly court life in Rome might be echoed in a book like Giegher’s with its detailed recitation of lavish menus and elaborate table settings. The publishers of these works developed a lively (and lucrative) market for domestic treatises. From the elite status of their readers and the rising status of their authors, it is apparent that owning or writing culinary literature conferred prestige on the individual. Early sources of recipes and information about foodstuffs were primarily found in manuscripts. The Elevation of Authors in Word and Image 15 Medieval health manuals, Tacuinum sanitatis, provided information about the culinary properties of herbs, dietary advice, and suggestions for sleep and exercise. 16 15 On Medieval cooking manuscripts see Odile Redon, Françoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi, The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, trans. Edward Schneider (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). These manuscripts were often illuminated with scenes of cooking, gardening, and figures engaging in exercise and other healthful activities. Later, more specialized iterations of cookery texts continued to exist solely in manuscript form, such as those that court cooks Carlo Nascia and Antonio Maria Dalli produced in seventeenth-century Parma. 16 Agnes Acolos Bertiz, “Picturing Health: The Garden and Courtiers at Play in the Late Fourteenth- Century Illuminated Tacuinum Sanitatis” (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 2003). See also Jean A. Givens, Karen M. Reeds, Alain Touwaide, eds, Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200-1550 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) and Luisa Cogliati Arano, The Medieval Health Handbook: Tacuinum sanitatis, Oscar Ratti and Adele Westbrook, trans. (New York: G. Braziller, 1992). 109 The authors of culinary texts, beginning with anonymous recipe collections in manuscript, were typically working cooks. 17 Maestro Martino, a fifteenth-century cook, compiled an extensive manuscript set of recipes that were later printed under many guises including Platina’s influential De honesta voluptate et valetudine of 1475. 18 Platina’s book was among the first to establish the “art” of eating pleasantly and aesthetically and was a foundational humanist work, articulating learned culinary philosophies to establish a new genre of literature. 19 Agostino Zanni da Portese later published the Martino recipes in 1516 as Epulario ostensibly written by a cook named Giovanni Rosselli. This version was then published in London in 1598, still as “authored” by Rosselli, under the title Epulario, or The Italian banquet wherein is shewed the maner how to dresse and prepare all kind of flesh, foules or fishes. As also how to make sauces, tartes, pies, &c. After the maner of Many scholars (most recently Luigi Ballerini) have identified Maestro Martino’s Il Libro de arte coquinaria as the foundation for Platina’s work and all subsequent Italian cooking texts. 17 See Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, 668-78, for a bibliography of early manuscript and printed culinary texts. 18 Platina, or Bartolomeo Sacchi (1421-81), was a Vatican librarian. Platina’s text drew upon both the work of ancient philosophers (Epicurus, Apicius and Pliny) as well as his contemporary Maestro Martino. In alluding to Epicurean philosophy, Platina attempted to relate Christian values of balance and well- being with gustatory pleasure. He does acknowledge the source for his recipes: “What a cook, O immortal gods, you bestowed in my friend Martino of Como, from whom I have received, in great part, the things of which I am writing.” Martino The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book, ed. Luigi Ballerini and trans. Jeremy Parzen (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 2. 19 Platina, Platina, on Right Pleasure and Good Health: A Critical Edition and Translation of De Honesta Voluptate Et Valetudine, trans. Mary Ella Milham (Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998), xxxii; Simon Varey, “Medieval and Renaissance Italy, the Peninsula,” in Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A Book of Essays, ed. Melitta Weiss Adamson (New York and London: Routledge, 2002). 110 all countries. With an addition of many other profitable and necessary things. 20 The subsequent re-printing of the Rosselli text in both Italian and English evinced the text’s popularity. Many of the most widespread works of early printed medical and self-help literature were copied or pirated from existing sources, and the same was true in culinary literature such as Epulario and the Martino recipes. 21 The Martino-Platina- Roselli texts are a precursor to the explosion of books related to the kitchen that would follow and illustrate the importance of a cook-author for publishers and readers. Rather than presenting the work as a collection of recipes from a late-medieval collection, the publisher invented the persona of Giovanni Rosselli, presumably a living cook, to appeal to readers. The introduction of this fictive cook-author was a key element in fifteenth-century of books on cookery, and it indicated the value of attaching knowledge and expertise to a specific master. 22 By the late seventeenth century, steward-authors such as Antonio Latini attained aristocratic status, in part thanks to the successful tactics of authors such as Scappi. Latini, who worked his way through the courts of Rome and Naples and earned the title 20 Martino, The Art of Cooking; Platina, Platina, on Right Pleasure and Good Health; Giovanni Rosselli, Epulario (London: William Barley, 1598). 21 Thanks to Ken Abala for this observation. 22 The invention of an author is also a phenomenon in cooking texts from other countries. One example is the figure of Hannah Woolley in England, who is the putative author of many books aimed at a female market. Margaret Ezell, Amanda Herbert Bilby and others have argued that “Hannah Woolley” was in fact a composite figure, invented by male publishers to help sell books. Margaret Ezell and Amanda Herbert Bilby, conference presentations, “Reading and Writing Recipe Books 1600-1800, University of Warwick, August 8-9, 2008. Woolley wrote several popular books on etiquette, cookery, and cosmetics that were printed many times from 1661-1700. See Hannah Woolley, The gentlewomans companion, or, a guide to the female sex (London, 1675; Reprint, Totnes, Devon [England]: Prospect Books, 2001); Woolley, The cook's guide, or, Rare receipts for cookery (London, 1664; Electronic edition, Providence, RI: Brown University Women Writers Project, 1999); Woolley, The queen-like closet, or, Rich cabinet: stored with all manner of rare receipts for preserving, candying & cookery (London, 1670). 111 of cavaliere, demonstrated the high level of nobility that an experienced and ambitious scalco could attain. He published his Lo Scalco alla moderna (Naples, 1693) and, at the end of the seventeenth century, represented a domestic official who had benefited from the professionalizing strategies of Scappi and his sixteenth-century peers. One must be cautious in interpreting the language of these authors, as they worked in a strictly hieratic system that required them to conform to the many social expectations of the court and church. However, their rhetoric supported a self-fashioning process that constructed their identities as both noble and skilled, fit for ensuring the safety and pleasure of royal and aristocratic courts. 23 It is necessary, therefore, insofar as many long years of experience have taught me, that a skilled and competent Master Cook, wishing to have a good beginning, a better middle and a best ending, and always to derive honour from his work, should do as a wise Architect, who, following his careful designs, lays out a firm foundation and on it presents to the world useful and marvelous buildings. For example, Scappi declared: 24 Scappi’s vision of the cook as a master artist and architect is worth mentioning in light of previously discussed relationships between art and cookery. Through these words, Scappi elevates his work to a higher status; he is concerned with shifting cookery and culinary preparations from the realm of craft to a level enjoyed by the liberal arts. This is paralleled by Giorgio Vasari’s almost-simultaneous elevation of the artist that 23 John Jeffries Martin, Myths of Renaissance Individualism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 24 Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, 99. All citations and translations from Scappi’s text will be taken from this English translation unless otherwise noted. 112 envisioned him as a master rather than artisan. 25 In Scappi’s introductory remarks, framed as advice to an apprentice, he wrote, “I shall set out for you briefly in these five books wherein the art and craft of a Master Cook lies.” 26 The first chapter of Scappi’s book begins by addressing his apprentice, Giovanni, and the disciples that will read the work. Scappi here employed language to align himself with current trends that insisted upon the elevation of skills previously considered to be those of a craftsman or artisan. 27 Scappi gives his reasons for writing such a book (“so that after my death all my work and practical experience...should remain in you”) and described the characteristics of an ideal cook: honor and dedication to his work, experience, practical knowledge, impeccable personal characteristics, and dedication to his patron. 28 This is significant as it evinces Scappi’s insistence that a master passes on not only practical knowledge and skills but also, by example, the norms of behavior and comportment required for his profession. In addition to experience and practical knowledge the cook should also fulfill proper gentlemanly and courtly virtues, remaining “patient and modest in everything he does.” Scappi warns the reader to be “as sober as possible because whoever is without a good deal of sobriety loses patience as well as a natural taste for things.” 29 25 Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). The first edition of Vasari’s Lives was published in 1550; a revised and expanded version followed in 1568. He also 26 Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, 98. 27 Ibid. 28 Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, 97. 29 Ibid. 113 emphasizes that a cook should know the “nature and quality of the Princes and other Lords whom he will serve,” highlighting the cook’s need to be conversant in the medical applications of foodstuffs for different humoral complexions. He compares master cook to a master architect and Scappi emphasizes that the food should not only be flavorful but also “pleasant and delightful to the eye with their pretty colors and appetizing appearance.” 30 The book was published around the time of Scappi’s death, and his concern that his life’s work be preserved is significant, especially if one considers previous traditions of uomini illustri. It is evident from patterns of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists that one of the hallmarks of a great master was that his legacy lived on through his students and this was also a concern of Scappi’s. While Vasari’s artists left behind evidence of their life’s work—in the form of painting or sculpture—the cook’s inventions were made for immediate consumption. Scappi’s record of his dishes and meals captured for posterity the necessarily ephemeral creations. The meals would be eaten or discarded, and thus the preservation of the newly elevated art was of fundamental importance. And, as self- appointed scribes recording art and cookery, Scappi and Vasari also strove to ensure their own eternal fame. The cook is not a mere laborer but a master designer, one who controlled the entire sensory experience, flavor, texture, and appearance. Additionally, for aristocratic readers of this text, Scappi’s description of the cooks who served them as creative, knowledgeable, sober, patient, pleasant, and clean would surely be reassuring. 30 Ibid. 114 A dignified portrait of the author was another way for publishers and authors to establish authority and name recognition. These served to present an idealized image of the cook or steward far removed from the domestic context, and rather than depicting the cooks at work in the kitchen or in service at the table, they are shown via the conventions of a literary, scholarly, or aristocratic master. In his portrait, Scappi is depicted with the naturalistic wrinkles, stern expression, and flowing beard of old age, as a mature, wise man dressed in finely trimmed clothing with a decorative cartouche bearing his name (Figure 2.3). 31 At the top left, the Scappi coat of arms contains a cup and small dog straining to scappare, or escape from his leash. Scappi’s clothing signals him as a gentleman and there is not a hint of the hard labor of the kitchen. 32 31 See Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari, Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History, Aine O'Healy, trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 162-64, for further discussion of frontispiece portraits. The decorative framing around Giegher’s portrait identifies his nationality (Bavarian) and age (forty years) along with his name (Figure 2.4). The central portrait depicts Giegher with courtly facial hair and clothing. It is flanked with two coat of arms; on the left with six curved knife holders (coltellere) and an inscription alluding to his vigilance and watchfulness. The right seal inscribes “not without cause” in Latin and depicts a crossed carving knife and fork within a scrolled cartouche. These humanist and aristocratic trappings (the coats of arms and Latin expressions) nevertheless allude to his particular expertise as a scalco and trinciante in the celebration of his carving tools. 32 John Varriano has compared Scappi’s portrait with Giorgio Vasari’s, noting the striking similarities between them. Varriano, Tastes and Temptations: Food and Art in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 18-20. 115 The positioning of the knives and forks within elaborate cartouches signals the professionalism of the author and removes his tools from their actual, messy use. Two other iterations of portraits of steward-authors include Giovanni Battista Crisci (1634) and Antonio Latini (1692). Both correspond to conventions of author portraits and remove their subjects from the circumstances of their work. Crisci is shown in a similar portrait type to Giegher, with a sword at Crisci’s side (Figure 2.5). Putti, lions, and elaborately scrolling and baroque architectural elements frame him. A coat of arms featuring a growing tree establishes the high status of the author (crescere is to grow in Italian, perhaps punning on his name, Crisci), and none of the elements on the page allude to the details of his profession. Latini (the steward who did attain an aristocratic title) is imagined with a flowing wig and fine clothing indicating his wealth and elevated status (Figure 2.6). He holds a copy of his own book, an important signifier for the transition of steward into author. While Giegher’s portrait was still imprinted with the knives and forks of his trade, Latini here is shown as a purveyor of knowledge via the printed word. His implicit status as a genuine, authorial master is verified by the image. The portraits of Scappi, Giegher, Crisci and Latini were meant to impress and echoed the role of their books in elevating the status of culinary knowledge. Dedications and promotional texts in the front matter of the books hint at their intended purpose and audience. For example, Scappi’s Opera is dedicated to “the Illustrious and Very Reverend Lord Don Francesco di Reinoso, Personal Steward and 116 Chamberlain to His Holiness our Lord Pius the Fifth. 33 This steward was Scappi’s supervisor at the papal court, and this dedication reveals his respect and friendship with Reinsoso via the typically exaggerated language of dedications. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors often dedicated their works to religious or ducal patrons, but by highlighting the dignity and nobility of a scalco in his dedication, Scappi elevated the overall status of domestic officials. Similarly, Vittorio Lancellotti dedicated his 1627 treatise to Dianora Morelli, the personal cook of Cavaliere Anton Francesco Marmi (however the dedication on the title page is to Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandino). 34 Other common dedicatees were the princes that employed the books’ authors: Signor Cardinal Alessandro Farnese for Vincenzo Cervio’s Il trinciante (Venice, 1581) and Signor Don Hippolito da Este, Cardinale di Ferrara for Cristoforo Messisbugo (Ferrara, 1549). In his dedication, Messisbugo wrote: By including his colleague Morelli as a dedicatee, Lancellotti constructs a sense of mutual respect between cook and steward. Therefore the banquet that I created was shade, dream, chimera, metaphor and allegory. These things are described and narrated with this lovely order that I knew...to the honored and glorious name of our master most reverend this is dedicated, as a perpetual testament to the sum of my happiness. 35 33 Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, 94. 34 Vittorio Lancellotti, Lo scalco prattico (Rome: Francesco Corbelletti, 1627). “Dedicato a Dianora Morelli Quoca segreta dell’Ill.mo sig.r Cavaliere Anton Francesco Marmi.” 35 Cristoforo Messisbugo, Banchetti, composizioni di vivande et apparecchio generale (Ferrara: Giovanni de Buglhat et Antonio Hucher, 1549). “Cosia punto il banchetto ch'io facevò era tutto ombra, sogno, chimera, fittione, mettafora, e allegoria. Lequai cose descritte et narrate con quel miglior'ordine ch'io seppi, et che lor conveniva, all'honorato & glorioso nome di V.S. Reverdissima havendo destinato di dedicare, come per un perpetuo testimonio della somma allegrezza mia: Essendomi stato il cio fare prohibito da chi mi può commandare, differendo ad altro tempo la editione (sepur ella mi sia mai concessa) non ho però voluto mancare di consercrarle hora alcuni convitti veri, abondanti di varie & diverse vivande dalla diligenza dalla industria & dalla esperienza del mio basso & rozzo ingegno...” 117 Messisbugo went on to describe banquets he will yet create “full of various and different foods from the diligence, industry, and experience of my low and rough ingenuity,” an interesting moment in which he contrasted the refined concept of the cook as a creator-genius with his “rough” artisanal skills. 36 In other front matter, the publisher or author of the texts often includes a short missive to the readers of the book declaring his intentions. These passages often make reference to the stated purpose of the texts: to instruct aspiring cooks, stewards, or carvers in the profession. The tensions inherent in “teaching” the complex skills of cooking or butchery through text and image are central for culinary literature. For example, Cesare Evitascandalo’s letter to his readers dedicated his text to the less skilled: Giovanni Battista Crisci’s Lucerna de Corteggiani “lights the flame” of affection for its dedicatee, Medici Grand Duke Ferdinando II, and the book’s title page prominently displays the Medici coat of arms (Figure 2.7). These lavish dedications certainly flattered the wealthy patrons of their service but also conferred prestige upon the author and text. However, I wanted most quickly to teach those who do not know this profession with this my (I would say discourse); so that new persons could be a good Steward. In that I know how to perform this service; and from my knowledge one can reasonably learn to make the lists for any occasion, and give orders to the Cook about how much he must cook in his service: and because to some it may seem superfluous and replicates many things...it is good that treating these books of this office you must newly state the qualities of them, and of many, and many other necessary circumstances, in regards to this honorable service, and in reading may you have satisfaction. 37 36 Ibid. 37 Cesare Evitascandalo, Dialogo del mastro di casa (Rome: G. Martinelli, 1598). “E pero' io con questo mio (diro' discorso) ho' voluto piu' presto insegnare a chi non sa questa professione; e di persona nuova 118 Evitascandalo emphasized his own experience as proof that he was capable of teaching these skills. The idea that novice stewards could learn all that they needed from his dialogue is particularly important. The book elevates the skill and prestige of the living master based on his written evidence and advice for those to follow, while, at the same time, declaring that expertise can come not only from practical hands-on experience but also from a book. Scappi emphasized the importance of practical kitchen experience and apprenticeship—a claim that seemingly exists in tension with the concept of learning to cook from a book. While he appears to strive for wide-ranging instruction through his comprehensive work, Scappi admitted its potential limitations. He repeatedly justifies his authority as master cook with his many years of practice, and acknowledges the necessity of experience and improvisation to becoming a master cook—something that cannot be gleaned from an instructional book. Therefore, the reader must possess skills beyond those taught by his text: The first foundation upon which he will set his main base must be his understanding of and experience with various sorts of foodstuffs so that, for want of anything (if not being available somewhere or in some season), what he cannot make with one ingredient he can make with another one that is available be in that place and in that season, so that using the ingredient he can make proper, sumptuous banquets with the main ingredients that are needed. 38 farlo buono Scalco, che di farmi conoscere ch'io so far questo servitio; e da questo s'impara' con ragione di far le liste per qual si voglia occasione, e da ordinare al Cuoco quanto deve operare nel suo servitio: e perche ad alcuno parera' che sia superfluo, in replicare molte cose, che nel Dialogo del Maestro di casa, parlando dello Scalco e Trenciante habbia dette; nondimeno m'e' parso conveniente, e bene che trattando questi libri di tali officij debba di nuovo dire delle qualita' d'essi, e di molte, e molt'altre circostanze necessarie, appartenente a' quest'honorati servitij, come leggendoli n'haverete sodisfatione.” 38 Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, 99. 119 The ability of a cook to improvise beyond the dictates laid out in recipes or references is acknowledged as fundamental since the freshness of food and necessary adherence to seasonal availability were important characteristics of sixteenth-century cooking. Scappi specifies the types of skills that the cook should possess which include knowledge of a wide range of meat, fish, and foul, and how to prepare, cook, and preserve them. The cook should also be familiar with varieties of spices, liquors, lards, fruits, and herbs (and their seasonal peaks) as these practical skills are frequently called upon. Additionally, Scappi provides hundreds of recipes but assumes the readers’ knowledge of the basic skills needed to bake, fry, boil, or roast. Therefore, this rhetoric of the authors’ teaching their life’s work through the books actually served to create impressive catalogues of cooks’ extensive skills for non-practicing readers. Beginning as early as 1584, later authors begin to refer to Scappi as an authority, indicating his fame and influence. Giovan Battista Rossetti’s Dello scalco (Ferrara, 1584) references Scappi as a figure of expertise in his field. Writing only fourteen years after the first publication of Scappi’s Opera, Rosetti praises the work of Messisbugo and Scappi and thus plays a crucial role in confirming the development of a specific genre of culinary literature, one with “new” authorities deriving expertise from their own experience. 39 39 Gillian Riley, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food, 457. For more on the construction of expertise in the early modern period, see Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). He writes that he will not discuss recipes, condiments, or cooking techniques as he is a steward to princes. He only remembers the dishes in order to describe them to his patrons. Rather that attempting to be a cook, he will write about 120 what he knows and “besides that, there is Sbugo [Messisbugo] and the excellent cook of his time Bartolomeo Scappi, who have written at great length, and many others, ancients and contemporaries.” For these reasons, Rossetti declares, he will attempt to contribute his own experiences as a scalco to the existing literature. 40 Another reference to the expertise of a cook is in Teodoro Albmair’s conceptualization of the four elements, a book in which he describes the natural world and often refers to culinary preparations for the fruits and vegetables in it. In his discussion of melons, for example, Albmair refers to Bartolmeo Stefani’s recommendation for cooking them. 41 In order to understand how Scappi transmitted his learned and intuitive knowledge through text and image, I will examine the engravings that were bound with his work, particularly those depicting ideal kitchen spaces and the specialized tools needed for food preparation. There were twenty-seven engravings created for the first printing of Scappi’s treatise, but there is no documentation of the artist, engraver, or Engravings of Kitchens and Tools in Scappi’s Opera 40 Giovan Battista Rossetti, Il Libro dello scalco (Ferrara: Domenico Mammarello, 1584; Reprint Sala Bolognese: A. Forni, 1991). “Ne mi par scrivere il modo di cucinarle, e condimento loro; sì perchè, sendo io Scalco de Prencipi, mi basta solo ricordare le vivande per aiuto della memoria de'Scalchi principianti de' Prencipi; poi che certa cosa e', che ogni Precipe havera' Cuochi, che a' i cenni ch'io faccio, l'intenderanno benissimo: non intendendo di far l'ufficio del Cuoco, ma si bene dello Scalco in quello che saprò. Oltre che e' il Sbugo, & eccellente Cuoco, al suo tempo Bartolomeo Scappio, ne ha lungamente scritto, e molti altri, e antichi, e moderni, così come anco non entrarò, che faria cosa debile, in dire il tempo, che portano le carni da me scritte in cuocersi così bolliti, come arrosti, pi che l'esperienza, in una sola volta lo mostrarà allo Scalco, e secondo la legna, e diligenze, che vi si possono usare, come pergotti bollentissimi, e cose simili: ciò lascio, e mi pongo a parlare delle vivande che si possono cavare: e perchè son certo, che infinite, e d'ogni cosa...” 41 Teodoro Albmair, I quattro elementi (Florence: Insegna della Stella, 1668), 92. He refers to Stefani, presumably from his treatise L’arte di ben cucinare (Mantua, 1662). 121 role Scappi himself might have played in dictating the contents of the images. 42 The scenes show rooms of an ideal kitchen, pages of kitchen equipment (some objects are specific to a papal household), the tools and arrangements necessary for traveling, an outdoor kitchen, and a two-page image of stewards bringing food for inspection prior to a papal conclave. The illustrations combine text and image, with labels and descriptions of the tools and their functions integrated in each composition. Male figures are shown performing specific tasks (from minding a spit to washing dishes). There is a contrast between the dress of the cooks shown at work and the more elaborately attired stewards that present their masters’ meals to a table of examiners at the papal conclave, showing the divisions within a kitchen staff. Overall, these illustrations diagram ideal kitchen spaces and present a seemingly exhaustive account of the expensive and valuable copper, pewter, silver, and iron kitchen utensils needed to However, correspondences between the text and image suggest that the artist was familiar with the text or had contact with Scappi. The undoubtedly expensive plates were used for the first edition, but for subsequent editions by another publisher, woodcuts were engraved after the original plates (compare Figures 2.8 and 2.11). The willingness of the new publisher to copy the plates indicates the value of the illustrations for the success of this book. 42 June di Schino and Furio Luccichenti, Il cuoco segreto dei papi: Bartolomeo Scappi e la Confraternita dei cuochi e dei pasticcieri (Rome: Gangemi, 2007), 92-95. di Schino and Lucchicenti propose (contrary to previous suppositions that the artist was Venetian) that the artist was Roman, based on the fact that the publishers, the Tramezzino brothers, resided in Rome and had a workshop there. The authors propose that perhaps through this shop, Scappi might have had contact with the printers and possibly the illustrator. 122 furnish them. The style and composition of the prints work with the subject matter to present a vision of a hierarchical, clean, and orderly culinary culture. Woodcuts from Cristoforo Messisbugo’s Banchetti compositioni di vivande, et apparecchio general (Ferrara, 1549) provide a useful comparison to the later Scappi engravings. Messisburgo, scalco for the Estense in Ferrara, gives instructions on the materials needed to prepare banquets, a listing of banquets that he had orchestrated, and around three hundred recipes. 43 The kitchen scene similarly utilizes hieratic scale and seemingly combines an interior and exterior kitchen (Figure 2.9). A ceiling and walls cover a rocky, undulating foreground, and the tilted perspective allows for the depiction of numerous domestic officials, kitchen accoutrements, and animals alongside a large fire. The largest figure, presumably a head cook, approaches the open fire with a bowl and spoon, followed by a deputy cook bearing a bowl of ingredients. To the left, another undercook rolls dough Messisbugo’s work was one of the first culinary treatises to be illustrated, with two simple woodcuts demonstrating scenes of cooking and banqueting. Utilizing a hierarchy of scale, a banquet scene depicts the patrons as the largest figures and also highlights the stewards and servers at the far left and right (Figure 2.9). The stewards elegantly present fruits and wine and are dressed in puffed- sleeve garments that echo the clothing of the aristocratic guests. The stewards have swords slung at their belts which also signal their elevated social position. The much smaller guests sit on a bench drinking wine, embracing one another, and throwing bones to the many dogs and cats milling about. 43 Capatti and Montanari, Italian Cuisine, 16. Messisburgo is noted as one of the first cooks of high status, and he was employed as both cook and steward for the Este court. 123 on a trestle table, with a spoon attached to his apron like a sword. Two men (much smaller in scale) turn spits of chicken and eel over the fire, and the smallest figure operates a set of bellows. He is perched amongst fish, a lamb, ducks and a pig awaiting their turns on the roasting rack, baskets and urns of tools and dishes, and a sneaky cat. The unknown creator of these woodcuts represented many aspects of a busy kitchen in an extremely small space and has confirmed the decidedly hierarchical nature of household officials through his manipulation of artistic scale. In contrast to the more chaotic scenes in the Messisbugo woodcuts, the kitchen engravings in Scappi’s Opera not only diagram the spaces described by the text, but they also present serene images where each piece of equipment and person is in their designated place. The engravings embody the ordered, hierarchical formulation of domestic space and officials that was idealized in elite sixteenth-century culinary culture. The ideal kitchens of Scappi’s treatise show none of the disorder of the Messisbugo kitchen illustration, with its strewn foodstuffs and barking dogs. In general, Scappi described the kitchen as sturdily constructed in a large space away from the main residence, with high ceilings and a variety of rooms for specified purposes. The rooms’ spatial characteristics lend nobility to their design as seen in four corresponding illustrations of a smaller room, a larger one, an outdoor covered loggia, and a room for making food with milk. The tilted perspective of these views allows the reader to see floor, ceiling, and walls, and certain tools and areas are neatly labeled. The inclusion of human figures allows for a “demonstration” of the tools and equipment that are cataloged in the other engravings. 124 These images of the various rooms in Scappi’s ideal kitchen serve as a fruitful opportunity to compare the deployment of text and image, exploring ways that each conveys different information. The first illustration is of a room adjacent to the principal kitchen and shows seven cooks at work (Figure 2.11). Corresponding to the instructions in the text, the cooks are dressed in gentlemanly attire with their sleeves rolled up, aprons tied at waist, and caps atop their heads, and they are labeled as dutifully “working the dough.” Following Scappi’s description, the high ceilings and windows allow air to circulate. Kitchen implements are neatly arranged on shelves and hanging from hooks, a pot boils on a small stove, and a well provides fresh water. The image diagrams the space for the reader and roughly corresponds to Scappi’s written description. This combination of text and image also references tropes of restricted access to culinary goods and spaces; his text recommends “a cabinet...with several compartments that can all be locked holding sugars, spices, and other things used daily in the personal food for the Prince.” 44 Another engraving is labeled the “principal kitchen” and also relates specifically to the text. In this kitchen, one cook sits minding a roasting spit over a large fire (Figure 2.12). Again, tools are neatly stored in various places in the imposing space and In the illustration, the imposing, locked cabinets on either side of the scene align with the practices of isolating the ducal foods and personnel from those used to service the court at large (and the their inclusion in this scene surely would have been impressive to an upper-class). 44 Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, 103. 125 labels are given to certain items such as the lantern and the door to the room for waiters. Scappi’s description occasionally corresponds quite directly to this illustration: On one side of kitchen a short stone column should be set up and stable, on which, as need be, a large mortar can be placed; likewise a large wooden workbench, four hands high and ten long, on which various meats can be cut up. There should also be six folding trestle tables, each eight hands wide, which can be moved easily from place to place; another one sixteen hands long and six wide which will be used for making up dishes; and a similar one of walnut or some other smooth wood to be used for working all sorts of pastry dough on it. 45 The column and mortar are on the left, and the tables match the description—one for pasta, one for serving, and one for cutting meat. In this case, the text and image complement one another, and each fleshes out the description of the ideal kitchen in distinct ways. The text can provide exact measurements for the furniture and implements while the print shows them in use, and diagrams the ideal space. The main room of the kitchen is depicted as calm, with only one cook minding the fire while waving to the viewer. This representation aligns with the practices (as at the Medici and Farnese courts) of restricting access to certain areas of the kitchen, making them available only to private cooks or other top-level officers. It is made clear that assistants and servers should not enter this space; on the right side of the image, a small window leads to a “small room for waiters,” indicating that they should have their own designated space so as not to disturb the activities of the cooks. An outdoor loggia depicts several items that correspond to Scappi’s stated use for such a place: the hanging carcasses and barrel full of fish (Figure 2.12). He stressed that this small courtyard is a space “in which at any time fowl can be plucked, large 45 Ibid., 102. 126 animals skinned and various other sorts of work done” and emphasized the need for cleanliness in this outdoor room. 46 A corresponding recipe from the book nicely shows how Scappi conveys the skills of manual tasks and measuring quantities necessary for cooking. It vividly demonstrates Renaissance methods of using all parts of animals and details the preparation of the “Various ways to prepare an ox’s head.” 47 It should be noted that Scappi includes the inherent knowledge needed for such a task including the peak seasons for the ox (autumn through February) and several preparation options: boiling the entire head with sausage or frying the “best” parts of the head (tip of snout, brains, eyes and jowls). In many of the recipes, Scappi similarly emphasizes the best seasons for the ingredients, and the menus are organized by month, revealing a reliance on fresh foods. 48 46 Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, 104. Scappi enumerates skills that he has gained through hands-on labor, from ascertaining the best quality of meat over several months of the year to learning what are the most savory bits of a cow head. He details the physical labor of processing animals for consumption—the skinning, trimming, scraping, de-boning, and boiling of carcasses necessary to prepare them for the table. However, as in Figure 2.13, this work has already been done, as the clean carcasses of two goats hang in the shade of the loggia. Here, cleanliness and order are emphasized, rather than physical labor. 47 Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, 133. 48 This reliance on the best fruits of the season is evident in other culinary works, notably, a treatise written by an Italian ex-patriot living in England which vociferously defended and praised the Italian custom of eating seasonal fruits and vegetables. See Giacomo Castelvetro, The Fruit, Herbs & Vegetables of Italy: An Offering to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, trans. Gillian Riley (London: Viking, 1989). 127 Another indoor-outdoor space in this imagined kitchen was a cool room for using dairy products (Figure 2.14). In the engraving, the curving, vaulted ceiling frames a window that allows cool air to circulate. Three cooks stir and churn various forms of milk as an observer peers down from an internal window. The inclusion of this figure is curious but aligns with several themes that I have identified for courtly culinary culture. The man might be an observer, watching and learning from the cooks at work—much like an aristocratic reader who would have no practical experience in matters of the kitchen; the observing figure then slyly represents the reader-apprentice of the book. He could also be read as a supervisor (elevated above his inferiors), another manifestation of the strict hierarchies that dominated discourse around the organization of culinary officers. Twenty (over half) of the engravings catalogue kitchen utensils (Figures 2.15, 2.16, 2.17, and 2.18). These illustrations, I argue, articulate the professional skills needed to properly utilize them, allude to the wealth of households that are able to afford the costly implements, and align with some characteristics of natural philosophy. Catalogued neatly and labeled on the page, the equipment illustrations offer a complete reference to the seemingly endless supplies needed in a large kitchen. The collection of pots and pans of every shape and size, gadgets such as a sugar grater and egg cooker, storage vessels, knives, ladles and spoons demonstrates the sheer quantity of implements, the complexity of the cooking space, and the knowledge required of its practitioners. One page depicts pots, jugs, a mortar, colander, cheese grater, ladles, and strainers of various sizes. A fish frying pan, covered round dish, spice purse, flour sack, 128 and oven tools are neatly labeled. A comparison of these illustrations with the kitchen scene reveals that its shows the objects in use; a spice purse hangs at the top left of the room, a pot heats on the stove, and oven tools lean against the wall in Figure 2.11. In Scappi’s text entire sections are devoted to listing the items according to the type of metal used for the objects. Here the images allow for easy visual identification of the often minute physical differences between types of pots and pans. For example, describing the slight variations in the knives of Figure 2.18 in the text would be both tedious and extremely challenging. Similarly, woodcuts from Agostino Gallo’s treatise Le vinti giornate dell’agricoltura, et de’piaceri della villa (Venice, 1622) both catalog the tools needed but also show farmers at work, demonstrating the use of such implements (Figure 2.19). 49 The Medici, Farnese, and Sanvitale courts indeed had organized staffs, clearly delineated cooking and dining rooms, and vast stores of kitchen equipment as was Gallo’s treatise combines information about raising crops, livestock, cheese and wine making. In the accompanying images, such as this example, a selection of knives and saws is accompanied with an image of man putting a saw to use (with other saws attractively laid out on a rocky landscape). Like cooking treatises, books on wine and agriculture were also collected in aristocratic and ducal libraries and valued by elite readership. To own Scappi or Gallo’s book was, in a sense, to possess the tools and have the sophistication to hire the skilled individuals needed to employ them. 49 Agostino Gallo, Le vinti giornate dell'agricoltura, et de' piaceri della villa (Venice: Ghirardo Imberti e Iseppo Imberti, 1622). This text was also reprinted many times. 129 recommended by authors of prescriptive culinary literature. Scappi’s treatise diagrams a massive quantity of equipment that should furnish the ideal kitchen, and archival evidence at times confirms that elite kitchens sometimes conformed to these ideals put forth by the treatises. For instance, an inventory dated to 1620-28 indicates various furnishings of the Piacentian residence of Duke Ottavio Farnese. 50 Its format is unique in that it is categorized by the material, use, or medium of each object: silver, knives, paintings, brass, and so on. The copper goods for the kitchen range from chafing dishes (with their covers and iron handles noted as well) to Dutch ovens to plates to tongs. Iron goods include tripods for supporting pots over a fire, seven grills (four large and three small), pans for frying, and spits; the list is seemingly exhaustive and extraordinarily particular. The author of this inventory has chosen to record these valuable goods not room-by-room, as we have seen, but according to their medium, a format utilized by Scappi in his separate listings of copper and iron supplies needed for the courtly kitchen. Strikingly, this Farnese kitchen comes very close to replicating the variety and quantity of goods laid out by Scappi’s treatise in 1570. 51 The illustrations of Scappi and Giegher’s works should also be understood in relation to early modern natural philosophy and natural history, as they intended to teach, codify, and relate information about the natural and manmade worlds. These This analysis of the intersection of archival record and prescriptive literature links the possession of specialized equipment to the ownership of the knowledge needed to correctly use it. 50 ASP, CCF, serie VIII, busta 52, fasc. 3. “Inventari di materiali diversi nella casa del Principe Ottavio, del guardaroba di Piacenza, e diversi (1620-28).” 51 Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, 122-32. 130 fields provide an important context for understanding the strategies at work in the culinary illustrations: first, they illustrate and catalog the tools needed to perform tasks; second they diagram complex spaces and information, and, finally, they continue to assert the presence of a master via the inclusion of hands to demonstrate manual skills. By 1600, naturalists increasingly employed description as a mode of cataloguing and understanding the natural world. Dissatisfied with (yet still in many ways reliant on) ancient models, practitioners set out to create a language of both text and image that would accurately convey different orders of nature. 52 I contend that the kitchen was another arena in which concepts of early experimentation and its applications were being navigated and perfected—and where cooks and carvers needed a vast knowledge of plants and animals in order to transform We have seen how authors such as Scappi present themselves as modern authorities, culling knowledge from their experience rather than relying solely on ancient authorities. In placing the Scappi and Giegher illustrations in dialogue with such strategies, I argue for the images as interlocutors in the discourse of early modern visuality in relation to the creation and spread of knowledge and modes of thinking in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 52 Brian Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 11. Ogilvie presents the view that by 1600 natural history had solidified its principles and skill sets enough to be classed as a discipline. He contends that Renaissance practitioners such as Fuchs and Vesalius posited the development of natural history in a familiar manner: “ancient greatness, medieval decline, and modern restoration,” a narrative which was paralleled in art with Vasari. Ogilvie draws upon Svetlana Alpers’ work to argue that the role of natural history for the period’s intellectual history was one of describing, with experience at its center. In his history of the discipline, Ogilvie explores the intellectual roots of the naturalists’ techniques, institutions, print material and ways of approaching their subject, focusing primarily on botany outside of Italy and Iberia. He argues that sixteenth-century botanists made describing, first-hand observation, and illustration the center of their efforts and assertions of authority—a practice that changed in the seventeenth century when taxonomy, cataloging, and classification were the dominant modes. 131 them into edible matter. Steven Shapin describes the rhetoric of early scientific books as didactic and repeatable. Information was conveyed so that readers could ostensibly emulate experiments: “Actual methods, materials, and circumstances were to be minutely detailed so that readers who were of a mind to do so could reproduce the same experiments and thus become direct witnesses.” Early modern recipe collections, while presenting the elements of culinary experiments (dishes) provided more flexible directions (allowing for improvisation) and assumed a reader’s knowledge of cooking techniques. 53 Additionally, as demand grew for increasingly complicated dishes to serve large groups of people, kitchen technology (actual or imagined) rapidly advanced. Scappi’s cataloging of tools and complex spits is an especially significant document in this regard because it represents one cook attempting to explain the use of such new technologies. Among the illustrations in Scappi’s book is a depiction of a complex contraption, the mechanical spit to roast three different kinds of meat by turning one handle (Figure 2.20). The caption on the roasting spit reads, “Mill with spits that turns itself by the force of the wheels like the time of a clock as in this figure shows.” 54 53 Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 107. This complex machine is likely fanciful but aligns cookery with technological advances in other fields. As seen in this example, these culinary treatises should also be understood as products of the more widely changing ways that knowledge in early modern Italy was produced, recorded, and shared. 54 “Molinello con tre piedi che si volta dales per forza de ruotte on il tempo afoggia di orologio come nella presente figura si dimostra.” 132 The prints allow for easy visual identification and standardization of the utensils and their terminology but also function as visual inventories of the panoply of specialized and valuable tools prescribed for the ideal kitchen. Scappi acknowledges the fundamental role of experience and improvisation for the master cook and draws upon his own years of experience to justify his expertise and status as a master. The didactic strategies of text and image fashion his work as the product of a lengthy and successful career, and while Scappi instructs the reader as though he were an apprentice, I argue that the illustrations facilitate an elevated role for culinary knowledge. Specific actions are performed for the viewer and distance cookery from its messier, difficult physical labor. These activities are framed by airy, idealizing spaces and employ expensive, specialized tools. The Scappi text became so popular and widely recognized as the authority of new cuisine that it was plagiarized almost immediately by a Spanish author (Diego Granado, Libro del arte de cozina, Madrid, 1599) and a Dutch author (Antonius Magirus, Koocboec oft familieren Keuken-boec, Leuven, 1612) and served as an inspiration for Marx Rumpolt’s Ein new Kochbuch (Frankfurt, 1581). 55 55 Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, 676; Franç oise Sabban and Silvano Serventi , A tavola nel Rinascimento (Bari: Editori Laterza, 1996). On Magirus see Josef Schildermans and Hilde Sels, "A Dutch translation of Bartolomeo Scappi's Opera," Petits Propos Culinaires 74 (2003) 59-70. For Rumpolt, Marx Rumpolt, Ein new Kochbuch (Frankfurt am Main, 1581; Reprint: Hildesheim; New York: Olms, 1976). Rumpolt’s text is illustrated but with different figures from the Italian Scappi. These decoratively framed images show plump cooks at work in messy kitchens, rather than the idealized spaces envisioned by Scappi’s illustrator (Figure 2.21). For an elite Italian audience, 133 Scappi’s work promoted a vision of culinary culture that was intrinsically ordered and hierarchical, reflecting the concerns of the courtly milieu that purchased his books. Vittorio Lancellotti’s Lo scalco prattico (Rome, 1627) covers the basic information contained in most scalco literature. Lancellotti’s message “al lettore,” to the reader, indicates that he wishes not for fame but rather to instruct his readers. He also declares that he gains authority from his practical experiences, a sentiment echoed by many of these authors. He writes, Illustrating the Work of a Steward and Carver: Giegher’s Li tre trattati Having however in the course of over thirty years of service in this position, always with great Princes...I want most that the world know, that I have not taken anything from books but all from experience: and if the most frank were not to learn from this my form of practice, they could say to have traversed it only for curiosity, enjoying in itself but do not desire other remembrance: if the less expert would receive some satisfaction, or collect some utility, I would be most content... 56 In addressing the “less expert,” Lancellotti addresses the audience of “armchair” cooks or stewards, perusing these texts not for any practical application but for enjoyment of the subject matter. The Libro dello scalco offers instruction in all facets of the profession: descriptions of the household staff hierarchy, lists of suggested dishes and 56 Lancellotti, Lo scalco prattico, n.p. “Havend'io dunque nel corso di piu' trent'anni servito in questo carico sempre a' Prencipi grandi; & ordinati secondo le stagioni diversi Conviti sontuosi, ho' creduto di poter dar lume, & giovamento a gli studiosi di quest'Arte co'l distenderne questa piena, e distinta relatione. [...] Voglio di piu' ch'il Mondo sappia, ch'io non ho’ appreso niente da libri, e tutto dall'esperienza: e se i più franchi non impareranno da queste mie forme di prattica, potranno dire d'haverle trascorse per sola curiosita, godendo in se stessi di non haver bisogno d'altrui ricordo: se i meno esperti ne riceveranno sodisfattione, ò ne raccoglieranno qualch'utile, grandissimo sarà il mio contento, e mi terrò abbondantemeute rimunerato di queste mie deboli fatiche.” 134 menus, and alphabetical listings of foodstuffs, their properties and preparation. For example: Strawberries: strawberries are cold and humid to the first degree, move the body, refresh, provoke urine and digest quickly. They give little nutrition; they must be eaten with bread/pasta. [They can be served] raw, with wine and sugar on them or crusted with sugar and cinnamon. 57 This is a typical example of a steward’s treatise that frames the knowledge needed to oversee courtly households and provides helpful information for specific foods. This type of information would be useful to both an aspiring professional but also to the casual reader who would not only learn about the foods described but also marvel at their variety. Lancellotti’s treatise, like many scalco treatises, it is not illustrated. Before the Giegher text, only Vincenzo Cervio’s trinciante book contained woodcut images: two examples include one showing essential tools for the position—a unique fork that grips an egg for carving in the air—and another depicting a turkey and peacock ready for carving, with specific body parts labeled (Figure 2.22). These woodcuts, while far from comprehensive, highlight the tools needed for this highly specialized skill. The choice to illustrate the gallo d’india (turkey) and peacock demonstrates the elite readership for such works: these fowl would only be consumed at the most royal or aristocratic tables. The more schematic illustrations to Cervio’s text contrast with the forty-eight detailed engravings included in Giegher’s work. My first example highlights Giegher’s joining of image and text to demonstrate the arrangement of dishes on a table. In the treatise devoted to the scalco, Giegher lists 57 Giegher, Li tre trattati. “Fragole: Le fragole sono fredde, & humide in primo grado, muovano il corpo, rinfrescano, provocano l’orina, & presto si digeriscono, & danno poco nutrimento; si daranno inanzi pasto. Crude lavate con vino, con zuccaro sopra: In crostate con zuccaro, e canella.” 135 different types of foods and when they are in season, and offers menus for meals, also according to season; for example, lobsters, according to Giegher, are best prepared during a full moon. After the lists of food, he writes, “Now follow the engravings that show the way to put foods and confections on the table in three different ways.” 58 He mentions that the figures are lettered to show what item should go in what place on the table: “the numbers that are placed next to the names of food, and correspond in each case to the preceding figures, showing everyone the way in which each thing is placed on the table.” 59 58 Ibid. “Or seguon le figure intagliate in rame, che mostrano il modo di mettere in tavola le vivande, e le confettioni, in tre differenciate maniere.” One print depicts an octagonal table with meticulously placed plates that are numbered from one to nine (Figure 2.23). Alongside the table is the key to the numbers: a list that provides the contents of each plate, from oil to liver, prosciutto to sausage, and tripe. This image illuminates several important points; it re-emphasizes the fundamental roles of presentation and order to a meal and functions as a diagram. At the same time, the illustration offers a glimpse into the luxurious variety available at an elite banquet. Another image in Giegher’s text shows the correct arrangement of folded napkins on a credenza table and a stepped presentation of decorative plates (Figure 2.24). The steward-in-training can study it initially to learn proper presentation and later rely on it as a reference or memory tool. Overall, in comparison to Scappi’s work, Giegher’s treatise employed images as central to his didactic methods, frequently referring the reader to them. Despite the practical difficulties in following these 59 Ibid., “...ch’ i numeri, che son posti innanzi a nomi delle vivande, e corralpondono in ogni parte nelle predette figure, mostrano il modo di mettere ciascuna cosa per ordine in tavola.” 136 instructions, the Giegher text marks an important moment in the transmission of specialized culinary knowledge into image that offers a vicarious experience of the luxury available for courtly diners. 60 A large portion of the book is devoted to the trinciante, and Geigher provides instructions and guidelines for the duties and comportment of a carver. Giegher instructs the potential carver to behave in a gentlemanly and professional manner; indeed, he must possess not only the virtuoso skills of carving meats but also the manners of a courtier. The carver’s ritual transforms a possibly grisly or unappealing task into a show of dexterity and elegance. 61 60 Giegher’s work was also adapted in other countries. See Georg Philipp Harsdörffer, Vollständiges und von neuem vermehrtes Trincir-Buch (Nürnberg: Fürst, 1657). Harsdörffer utilized the same plates as the Italian Giegher. Giegher then offers step-by-step instructions for tableside service: the carver stands either at the head of the table or in front of the master; the knives are to have been prepared and wait folded in a tablecloth. The carver then selects the knife and fork appropriate for the task and cuts a piece of brief to demonstrate his readiness. The meat is then carved and the best cuts of meat are given to the head of the table and his most important guests. Giegher directs the carver to follow the order of foods that the scalco has pre-arranged on the table, indicating the highly orchestrated order of courses. The author concludes this section by reiterating 61 Giancarlo Malacarne, Sulla mensa del principe: Alimentazione e banchetti alla corte dei Gonzaga (Modena: Il Bulino, 2000), 25. 137 “the way that you can cut each thing is demonstrated clearly in the numbers of the following figures.” 62 Giegher even offers strict guidelines for the physical comportment of the carver. He instructs: “your arms should be fully extended and moved gracefully and elegantly avoiding rigidity or stiffness.” 63 He also cautions to “…watch to make sure that you do not drop the morsels from the fork, neither let things fly under the table while cutting, to avoid giving people something to laugh about.” 64 62 Giegher, Li tre trattati. “In che modo poi s’abbia a tagliar ciascuna cosa, mostran chiaramente i numeri delle figure seguenti.” In the embarrassing case that a mishap should occur, Giegher advises the carver not to become discouraged or lose his spirit but gracefully cover the mistake with something beautiful and continue “intrepidly” the work he had begun. Here, Giegher transmits body language through text and image, and, in so doing, offers the practical troubleshooting advice that a master would typically pass on to an apprentice. The inclusion of these minute details can be read in two ways: first, that Giegher intended this as a text for aspiring carvers. However, by expressly stating the specific duties and skills needed to be a carver, Giegher presents an idealized, masterful figure to the reader, shoring up his own reputation along with that of his peers. 63 Ibid. “...gli conviene stender ben le braccia, ma non però tenerle sempre rigide, e dure, quasi che sossero pali, o bastoni, ma bisogna snodarle tratto, tratto, e muoverle con bel garbo, e leggiadria.” 64 Ibid. “...con ogni studio guardar di non lasciar cader dalla forcina la roba imbroccata, ne manco far volar qualche cosa in trinciando sotto la tavola, per non dare alle persone materia di ridere...” 138 At the start of the carving treatise, a table of contents lists the subjects of the engravings and their corresponding numbers. 65 This use of tables to organize the information is similar to Scappi’s; however, in Giegher’s book, the headings are numbered and link to the engravings. The contents illustrate what the reader will learn. Like Scappi’s, Geigher’s text includes detailed images of the tools necessary for the task of carving (Figure 2.25). These larger engravings are folded in the back of the book and are inconsistent with the scale of the others. In line with the patterns of Scappi’s and others’ texts featuring minutely differentiated utensils as a marker of prestige and skill, this larger print celebrates the sharpened forks and knives to be used for performative carving. Another image caption explains “how to take in hand the fork and knife.” 66 Immediately following the illustrations of the tools are many images of animals to be carved, everything from pig to pigeon (Figures 2.27, 2.28, 2.28, 2.30, and 2.31). Simple line drawings shape the animals which are depicted without such details as skin, The plate accompanying this heading is an image of two hands; the left one holds a fork that spears a small bird, and the right grasps a slim knife (Figure 2.26). The engraving is simple; the hands are framed with cuffs, and the tools are rendered with unadorned line drawing, all against a plain background. In light of Giegher’s intention to convey “embodied” knowledge, the image is revealing. The printed hands show a skill that is typically learned through imitation of a master and physical effort, an experience that Giegher is ostensibly trying to replicate through his texts and images. 65 Not all images are numbered; in fact, only one list of images and numbers perfectly matches that in the table. 66 Giegher, Li tre trattati. “Come si tenga in man la forcina, e’l coltello.” 139 fur or feathers. Instead, they illustrate the basic, splayed form of the animal, divided into numbered sections. In the corresponding text, the reader is instructed to carve following the numbering. For example, a fish and lobster (Figures 2.27 and 2.26) are numbered in this fashion. For the fish, the carver is to skin first, make cuts at the head and tail, head, and then filet the flesh. In dealing with a lobster, the carver is instructed to first remove the meat of the claws, and then to cut up the tail. Let us compare this image with Giegher’s written instructions on “[h]ow to carve the trout and other fish.” 67 the trout, which is an exquisite and rare fish…can be carved with any fork and knife, and when it is large, cut across the fish, beginning with the head, that you leave attached with a finger length of flesh…and this being the best part of this fish, present it on a round plate with a little salt to the heads of the table. He writes: 68 The text uses trout as a specific example, but the fish in the diagram is generalized and corresponds tentatively to the description: the “cut across the fish” could be the skinning depicted. However, the connection between text and image is not always so clear. For example, where the image shows cuts at the tail, the text does not mention these incisions. The text also goes on to describe the process for cutting smaller fish, but Figure 2.27 is the only engraving of a fish, and therefore must represent all types of fish that a carver might dissect. After the illustrations of meats and fish, there are several prints that show ways to carve fruits, cedar, and melons in a variety of 67 Ibid. “Come si trinci la trota, ed altri pesci Cap. XIII” 68 Ibid., “La trota, ch’è pesce squisito, e raro, e che si cuoce, ed acconcia in varie maniere, si può trinciare con ogni forcina, e coltello, e quando ell’ e grande, si taglia per traverso, cominciando dalla testa, alla qual si lascia attaccatto un dito in circa di polpa; il che s’osserva per lo più in tutti gli alri pesci maggiori; ed esendo questa la miglior parte di questo pesce, si presenta sopra un tondo con un poco di sale al più principal della tavola...” 140 decorative techniques (Figure 5). Throughout Giegher’s discussion, he refers the reader to these images; therefore, despite incongruities between text and image, the engravings are meant to be an active teaching tool of the instructive text, descriptive and designed for frequent consultation. The images might also be meant as a mnemonic tool, with schematic illustrations to jog the memory of a trained carver. Another source for better understanding Giegher’s images of flayed animal bodies prepared for carving is the illustration to Giulio Casseri’s De vocis auditusque organis historia anatomica (Ferrara, 1600-1601) which relies on the dissection of animal bodies to demonstrate anatomical information, a common practice (Figure 2.32). In his case, a pig and cow’s head are used to display the functions of the throat. Veterinary handbooks such as Giovanni Battista Ferraro’s treatise also depict dissected horses to show their musculature and organs (Figure 2.33). 69 A brief treatise on the art of piegature or napkin folding follows the carving instructions. Renaissance tables featured elaborately folded napkins and a description of the banquet for the marriage of the Duke of Mantua in 1581 notes that “the The dismemberment of animals—and subsequent engraving of their dissected bodies—was thus commonly used in the service of both natural and culinary knowledge. However, in Giegher’s book, the process is thoroughly sanitized in both text and image, supporting the notion that the majority of readers were not working carvers or butchers, and, as such, the book aims to impress its audience rather than disgust it. 69 Gio. Battista Ferraro, Trattato vtile, e necessario ad ogni agricoltore (Naples, Antonio Pace, 1602). This text is bound with Pirro Antonio Ferraro, Cavallo freneto di Pirro Antonio Ferraro Napolitano ... Diuiso in quattro libri (Napoli, Appresso Antonio Pace, 1602). 141 napkins…were delightfully sculpted by pleating them into columns, arches and trophies, which made for a very fine sight along with a multitude of flags bearing the arms of all the lords at the feast.” 70 In his text, Giegher endeavors to pass on a highly complicated and intricate art through word and image. He writes: “I finally had engraved in copper the different ways of folding tablecloths or napkins with the addition of a brief and succinct statement, for better teaching, and for helping with memory.” 71 He promises that the reader will be able to fold the cloths into pyramids, large birds, swans, and even centaurs and stresses the necessity of the images for his instruction: “I will first show an easy and fast way to fold and shape linens for the table…as the following figures with their numbers clearly show.” 72 There are three different engravings with hands demonstrating the initial steps for folding, for example: “The second drawing of the same hands [as the first] showing the way to begin the spine” (Figure 2.34). 73 70 Qtd. in Roy Strong, Feast: A History of Grand Eating (London: Harcourt, 2002), 175. These engravings show hands at work, serving as a visual replacement for a physical practice. The printed hands attempt to instruct a skill that is typically learned through imitating a master and through practical application, an experience that Giegher is clearly trying to replicate through his texts 71 Giegher, Li tre trattati. “Ho finalmente fatto intagliare in rame diverse maniere di piegature di tovagliolini, o saluiette, con aggiungerui una breve, e succinta dichiarazione, per meglio intenderle, e per aiutare in parte la memoria di coloro...” 72 Ibid. “Prima si mostra un modo facile, e spedito, di piegare, e stoccare ogni panno lino per seruigio della tavola in occasion di convito, con molte altre galanterie, come le figure seguenti co’lor numeri chiaramente additano.” 73 Ibid. “Il secondo disegno delle dette mani addita il modo di cominciar lo spinapesce.” 142 and images. 74 In representing particular and idealized visions of culinary culture, these books afforded their non-practicing readers many pleasures. From the recipes, menus, and text, the reader could vicariously experience lavish meals and the seemingly boundless variety of foods prepared for the elite table. It would be extremely difficult to follow Giegher’s brief textual descriptions and simple diagrams and actually create the finished products shown in the following images which (also numbered in relation to the text) show intermediate steps to making fantastical creations (Figures 2.35 and 2.36). For example, one displays napkins transformed into birds, dogs, griffins, a rabbit, dragon, crab, and even a dog with a fish tail. However, Giegher employs images to teach the reader this “embodied” skill of napkin folding using “disembodied” hands to demonstrate how to hold the hands and cloth in the proper fashion. The images of hands folding napkins present a compelling example of the transmission of a complex skill via the printed image. I argue that these hands represent the presence of the maestro himself, demonstrating his specialized expertise to a wider audience of the elite. The inherent difficulty in following these simple diagrams to transform a napkin into a swan or centaur serves to underscore and elevate the value of the master’s work and practical experience. Possession of this book meant a familiarity with and appreciation of these elite arts, surely conferring sophistication and discernment upon the reader. 75 74 Similarly, hands show the proper way of setting type for a printing press in Joseph Moxon’s Mechanick exercises (London, 1683). The illustrations, which proved to be a 75 The recitation of a menu can have several different functions for this type of literature, and according to Robert Appelbaum, the recording of menus brought together “profusion and redundancy” to communicate a sense of abundance, or “copiousness.” Appelbaum notes that the menus in these books 143 commercially successful addition to the texts, offered harmonious visions orderly kitchens, expensive and specialized equipment, and masterful talents for transforming and presenting foods. The presentation of gastronomic information in these texts and illustrations, however idealized, is essential for understanding the courtly “period appetite,” and the popularity of these illustrated books shows a market hungry for the professional expertise of these newfound masters. served to commemorate and immortalize banquets but also to provide a concrete guide to the style of cuisine that the cookbook espouses. Appelbaum, Aguecheek’s Beef, 88-97. 144 Figure 2.1: Vincenzo Cervio, Il trinciante (Venice: Alessandro Vecchi, 1622) 145 Figure 2.2: Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice: Alessandro Vecchi, 1622) 146 Figure 2.3: Frontispiece portrait, Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 147 Figure 2.4: Frontispiece portrait, Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 148 Figure 2.5: Frontispiece portrait, Giovanni Battista Crisci, Lucerna de corteggiani (Naples, 1634) 149 Figure 2.6: Frontispiece portrait, Antonio Latini, Lo scalco alla moderna (Naples: Parrino e Mutii, 1692) 150 Figure 2.7: Title page, Giovanni Battista Crisci, Lucerna de corteggiani (Naples, 1634) 151 Figure 2.8: Woodcut from later edition of Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera 152 Figure 2.9: Woodcut from Cristoforo da Messisbugo, Banchetti, compositioni di vivande, et apparecchio generale (Ferrara, 1549) 153 Figure 2.10: Woodcut from Cristoforo da Messisbugo, Banchetti, compositioni di vivande, et apparecchio generale, ... (Ferrara, 1549) 154 Figure 2.11: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 155 Figure 2.12: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 156 Figure 2.13: Engravings from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 157 Figure 2.14: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 158 Figure 2.15: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 159 Figure 2.16: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 160 Figure 2.17: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 161 Figure 2.18: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 162 Figure 2.19: Woodcuts from Agostino Gallo, Le vinti giornate dell'agricoltura, et de' piaceri della villa (Venice, 1622) 163 Figure 2.20: Engraving from Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570) 164 Figure 2.21: Engraving from Marx Rumpolt, Ein new Kochbuch (Frankfurt, 1581) 165 Figure 2.22: Woodcuts from Vincenzo Cervio, Il trinciante (Rome, 1593) 166 Figure 2.23: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 167 Figure 2.24: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 168 Figure 2.25: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 169 Figure 2.26: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 170 Figure 2.27: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 171 Figure 2.28: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 172 Figure 2.29: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 173 Figure 2.30: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 174 Figure 2.31: Engraving from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 175 Figure 2.32: Engravings from Giulio Casseri, De vocis auditusque organis historia anatomica (Ferrara, 1600-01) 176 Figure 2.33: Engraving from Giovanni Battista Ferraro, Trattato vtile, e necessario ad ogni agricoltore (Naples, 1602) 177 Figure 2.34: Engravings from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 178 Figure 2.35: Engravings from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 179 Figure 2.36: Engravings from Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639) 180 Chapter 3 Nature and Food in Still Life: Giovanna Garzoni’s Hybrid Studies for the Medici Images in print and drawing of culinary culture from the Medici and Farnese courts largely denied the material presence of food itself and instead represented hierarchies, spaces, equipment, and skills. Naturalistic, colorful, and sensual images of fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish only appeared in still life paintings such as the works of Giovanna Garzoni and Felice Boselli. This chapter marshals evidence of the courtly “period appetite” in mid seventeenth-century Florence and leverages it to elucidate a set of twenty fruit and vegetable miniatures painted by Medici court artist Garzoni between 1642 and 1651 and housed in the Villa Poggio Imperiale. Her watercolor paintings of sliced melons or bursting figs are ripe with meaning and permanently capture the ephemeral beauty of fresh fruit and vegetables. While the villa gardens were limited by practical constraints of the changing seasons, disease, and inclement weather, the Garzoni miniatures could serve as a year-round, idealized reminder of the agrarian bounty of Tuscany and furthered Medicean concepts of dominion over both nature and society. The series of works, each depicting different combinations of fruits, flowers, and nuts, also brings to mind a groaning credenza set up for a lavish lunch. The first course of a sumptuous courtly meal would be characterized by a huge variety of cold dishes, salads, vegetables, and nuts. Each guest would then select his or her choices to make up 181 a personalized meal corresponding to specific dietary preferences and needs. A profusion of choices signaled not only the magnificence and munificence of the host, but also his concern for the health of his guests. These gleaming painted dishes of fruits represent a similar sense of bounty notable for its freshness and variety, the very characteristics that were prized in seventeenth-century Italian dining practices. At the same time, Garzoni’s training as a botanical illustrator and interest in new ways of examining the natural world is apparent in the subject matter and composition of the works. As they feature exclusively edible goods, the works, I argue, fused botanical and culinary culture in a way that spoke to the particular interests of her Medici patrons. In the case of early modern Florence, natural philosophy cannot be separated from the princely culture that supported it, and Garzoni’s artistic production signals the embedded nature of gastronomic and culinary culture within the production of natural knowledge at the Medici court. Her creation of the jewel-like works in a series is an important feature: viewing them required the close looking and observational skills employed by natural philosophers, echoing the actual intellectual processes of their work. The paintings also invite the recognition of varieties of flowers and fruits, exercising the viewer’s knowledge of the natural world. Viewers of the works would no doubt be aware of the inherent value of such lovely, edible specimens in terms of gift exchange and might feel inspired to engage in lively cimenti, or debates on the relative medicinal and nutritive values of the depicted fruits and vegetables. The reception of the works must also be understood light of their display in a room of a villa 182 outside Florence, a space already symbolic of (perceived) pastoral escape and a closer connection to the land. Garzoni (1600-70) achieved a great deal of success as a female artist and had moved among courtly circles in Rome, Turin, and Paris before settling in Florence to produce miniature paintings of fruits, flowers, and portraits for the Medici from 1642- 51. 1 1 Gerardo Casale, ed., Giovanna Garzoni, “Insigne miniatrice”: 1600-1670 (Milan: Jandi Sapi, 1991), 27. Casale’s book offers the most complete monographic treatment of the artist to date. It attempts to definitively chart biographical details and artistic formation, presents a catalog of works, and an index of documents. Other helpful sources for Garzoni can be found in literature on still life and on Medici collections. See also Casale, Gli incanti dell’Iride: Giovanna Garzoni, pittrice nel Seicento, exh. cat. ([Italy]: Silvana, 1996); Silvia Meloni, “Giovanna Garzoni: Miniatora medicea,” FMR 15 (1983): 77-96; Marco Chiarini, ed., La Natura morta a palazzo e in villa: Le collezioni dei Medici e dei Lorena (Livorno: Sillabe, 1998); Giuseppe de Logu, Natura morta italiana (Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d'Arti Grafiche, 1962); Giovanni Godi, Fasto e rigore: La natura morta nell’Italia settentrionale dal xvi al xviii secolo (Milan: Skira, 2000); Mina Gregori and Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern, Natura morta italiana tra Cinquecento e Settecento (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2002); Silvia Meloni Trkulja and Elena Fumagalli, Still Lifes, Giovanna Garzoni (Paris: Bibliothèque de l’image, 2000); Luigi Salerno, Still Life Painting in Italy, 1560-1805, trans. Robert Erich Wolf (Rome: U. Bozzi, 1984); John T. Spike, Italian Still Life Paintings from Three Centuries (Florence: Centro di, 1983). Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin’s Women Artists is perhaps the most complete (albeit brief) account of Garzoni in English, and the authors characterize her works as a blend of still life and scientific drawing, tracing her in a lineage to Leonardo DaVinci and Albrecht Durer. Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, eds., Women Artists, 1550-1950 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976), 136. The delicate small-scale works painted with gouache on parchment functioned as hybrid objects that appealed to the particular Medicean cultural and intellectual interests of the mid-seventeenth century. The paintings not only showcased artistic skill in the creation of an aesthetic luxury object but also recalled a body of herbal and botanical literature. The miniatures also evoked current experiments in and new instruments for natural philosophy and highlighted the nourishing and valuable agrarian bounty of Medici lands. Finally, Garzoni’s paintings provocatively alluded to seventeenth- century debates about the health and safety of certain fruits and vegetables. To contextualize the works, this chapter first explores the Medici court’s patronage of 183 natural philosophy, outlines Garzoni’s training as a botanical illustrator, and demonstrates links between botany, medical, and culinary practices. I then outline the printed literature of herbals, examining seventeenth-century trends in their illustration and highlighting their inclusion of culinary information. The information and imagery contained in printed, illustrated books is essential for understanding the seventeenth- century connotations of Garzoni’s fruit and vegetable subjects. Close analysis of several examples of the images from the series found in the Stanza dell’Aurora of the Villa Poggio Imperiale illustrates the ways in which Garzoni’s renderings of food came to embody the specific concerns of the seventeenth-century Medici by corresponding to botanical interests, alluding to the health of Tuscan produce, and echoing established links between artistic practice and intellectual culture at court. 2 Thus the lavish display of Garzoni’s miniatures connected in significant ways to the intellectual projects and concerns of the Medici. Garzoni employed still life paintings of edible goods to satisfy her patrons; at the same time, these works allowed her to act as a participant in an esoteric court culture. An inventory from 1692 transferring stewardship of Medici Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere’s possessions to a new keeper of the guardaroba of the Villa Poggio Imperiale meticulously records her furnishings kept in the residence. Listed Pastoral Display: Garzoni’s Works in the Villa 2 Renaissance princes and other patrons not only utilized artistic production to glorify the court but also connected this artistic patronage with virtuous intellectual or literary pursuits as a means of justifying their expenditures. Stephen J. Campbell, Artists at Court: Image-Making and Identity, 1300-1550 (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2002), 10-12. 184 room by room, furnishings of alabaster, wood and iron are recorded as well as paintings with their dimensions and subject matter. Very few artists are named, but there is one whose works are described in particular detail: Two miniature paintings in vellum of diverse natural flowers within a footed glass vase, and in one a citrus and strawberries on the ground and in the other, a sliced lemon, with a sparrow pecking at grain, and foxtail millet with some almonds, various of the hand of Giovanna Garzoni of Lucca... 3 And later in the inventory listing specifically for the Stanza dell’Aurora: Twenty small paintings in vellum...miniatures, one with bunches of grapes with two pears and a snail, in another an open melon, arranged with a slice of watermelon, and in a cup for each one of which some are majolica, some porcelain, with various fruits inside and almost all with a different type of fruit for each cup. 4 The Stanza dell’Aurora was filled with dozens of Garzoni’s miniatures of fruits and flowers as well as other still life paintings (whose creators are not named), portraits, elaborate cups and bowls made of exotic materials such as tortoiseshell, bone and coconut husk. The villa Poggio Imperiale was one of the Medici’s many country homes, and, as it was located approximately one and a half miles south of their primary residence at the Palazzo Pitti, easily accessible. Luxury goods fashioned of natural materials mingled with detailed renditions of fruits, vegetables, insects, birds, and flowers in the Stanza dell’Aurora and this array of objects was enhanced by a window 3 ASF, GM, 995, 59v. “120. Due quadri in Carta pecora miniatorij diversi fiori al naturale entro ad una Guastada di Vetro, ch’in uno Un cedrato, e Fragole nel piano, e nell’altro Un Limon gross partito, con una passera in atto di beccar grano, e Panico con alcune Mandorle; diverso di mano della Giovanna Garzoni Lucchese...” 4 Ibid., 65v. “130. Venti quadretti in Carta pecora, ... miniatori in uno Grappoli d’Uva con due pere, e una Chiocciola, In altro un Popone aperto, in parte con una fetta di Cocomero, e in ser. una Tazza per ciasc.o che parte di Maiolica, e alcune di Porcellana entrovi diverse frutte, e quasi tutte d’un Genere di Frutte per ciasch.a Tazza...” These citations reprinted in Casale, Giovanna Garzoni, 284. 185 offering a vista into the fertile property and gardens. Although the miniatures were inventoried as possessions of Vittoria della Rovere, she likely inherited some or all of them from her brother-in-law Giovan Carlo and husband Ferdinand II. 5 As Paula Findlen has noted, early modern concepts of scientific discovery are intertwined with the collecting of nature and natural discoveries: Collecting provided an important mechanism to facilitate the transition of natural philosophy from a largely textual and bookish culture, difficult for all but the most learned to access, to a tactile, theatrical culture that spoke to a multiplicity of different audiences. 6 Indeed, natural philosophy was facilitated by courtly collections and these collections were created by experimentation with and cataloging of the natural world. 7 This mutual dependence is significant for the Garzoni miniatures, especially if one imagines them as collected objects of rarity. 8 [a] goodly huge cabinet, wherein whatsoever the hand of man by exquisite art or engine has made rare in stuff, form or motion, whatsoever singularity chance and the shuffle of things hath produced; whatsoever nature has wrought in things that want life and may be kept; shall be sorted and included. Francis Bacon’s proposal in 1594 for a collection, consisted of: 9 5 For a new assessment of Vittoria della Rovere’s patronage see Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, “Court Culture in17th Century Florence: The Art Patronage of Medici Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere (1622-94)” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2010). Straussman-Pflanzer discusses the Poggio Imperiale miniatures in relation to Vittoria della Rovere’s patronage on pages 282-95. 6 Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 9. 7 Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 189. 8 Like most artists of the time, Garzoni’s production was not limited to works on canvas or paper; she is known to have executed fans for the Grand Duchess and pietre dure designs for Giovan Carlo. Trkulja and Fumagalli, Still Lifes, Giovanna Garzoni, 8. 9 Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature, 184. 186 Note the inclusion of objects from “the hand of man” as well as objects of nature. Garzoni’s exquisitely produced miniatures, “rarities,” should also be considered within this context of the curiosity cabinet. 10 Garzoni’s works must also be analyzed in terms of their original display in the Stanza dell’Aurora in the Villa Poggio Imperiale. The Medicean villa served as an important symbolic space for the court as a sign of authority over rural as well as urban areas and a place for pastoral escape. This particular villa (previously the Villa Baroncelli) was purchased from the Orsini family in 1617 by Maria Maddalena who then had the structure completely re-designed and re-built by Giulio Parigi in the fashion of an imperial residence. In addition to engaging with still life and natural history illustration, the works can also be seen as objects of luxury due to their small scale. The works’ display alongside cups, vases, bowls, and other furnishings shaped from precious natural materials highlights issues of representation, artifice, and nature. 11 10 For more on collecting and notions of wonder see Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998) and Krzysztof Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500-1800, trans. Elizabeth Wiles-Portier (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). Poggio Imperiale’s land included sixteen estates that submitted their agricultural yields to the Medici coffers. Maria Maddalena, Cosimo II, and subsequently their son, Ferdinand II, favored this villa as a venue for court spectacle and entertainment and spent many months of the year there. Its name meant 11 Cesare Da Prato, R. Villa del Poggio Imperiale: Oggi R. Istituto della SS. Annunziata: Storia e descrizione (Florence: B. Seeber, 1895) 28-9. The date of the sale of the villa to the Medici is unclear; sources variously cite it as 1617-24. See also G. Capecchi, L. Lepore, V. Saladino, eds. La Villa del Poggio Imperiale (Rome: G. Bretschneider, 1979); Sophie Bajard and Raffaello Bencini, Villas and Gardens of Tuscany (Paris: Terrail, 1993); Ovidio Guaita, Le Ville di Firenze (Rome: Newton & Compton, 1996), 186-192. The Villa of Poggio Imperiale became the first state-run girls school (Istituto Statale della SS. Annunziata) in 1823 and continues to serve in this capacity. 187 to evoke Maria Maddalena’s links to the reigning Emperor of Austria, and the villa’s many galleries and halls were filled with painting, tapestry, sculpture and intarsia. The villa permitted an escape from the hectic life of the city, proximity to agrarian production, and access to increasingly refined gardens featuring unusual specimens of nature. 12 The idealizing fictions of agrarian villa life must be contextualized with its dismal realities. Troubled by famine and disease, the Tuscan countryside was certainly not as idyllic as these images suggest. The anxious ducal court of Cosimo I placed controls on agricultural production in the sixteenth century including prohibitions on the exportations of produce from Tuscany, and Ferdinand I later forbade the production and trade of grains outside Medici properties. 13 Therefore, the idealized specimens of Garzoni’s works must have offered a reassuring fiction of agricultural health. Garzoni worked primarily for Grand Duke Ferdinand II, his wife Vittoria, and brothers Giovan Carlo and Leopoldo. She is believed to have resided at the Tuscan Medici Patronage of Naturalists, Artists, and Cooks 12 See Guaita, Le ville di Firenze, 9-18. Later Medici of the seventeenth century also prized the villa and promoted artistic production there. Ferdinando’s sucessor Cosimo III retained a decisive interest in the development of natural philosophy with his collections of natural objects that eventually were housed in a museum headed by Francesco Redi as well as his support of the pharmaceutical laboratories and gardens. He developed the Villa di Castello’s “La Topaia” as “a combination pleasure palace and agricultural textbook,” which was eventually decorated with Bartolomeo Bimbi’s large-scale works that explicitly yet decoratively catalogued varieties of fruits and vegetables. For Bartolomeo Bimbi, see this quite comprehensive monograph: Silvia Meloni Trkulja and Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, Bartolomeo Bimbi: Un pittore di piante e animali alla corte dei Medici (Florence: Edifir-Edizioni, 1998); Chiara Nepi and Stefano Casciu, Stravaganti e bizzarri: ortaggi e frutti dipinti da Bartolomeo Bimbi per i Medici (Florence: Edifir, 2008); Daniela Savoia and Maria Letizia Strocchi, Le belle forme della natura morta, la pittura di Bartolomeo Bimbi (1648-1730) tra scienza e maraviglia exh. cat. (Bologna, 2001); Pierluigi Mariotti e Federica Rossi, Agrumi, frutta e uve nella Firenze di Bartolomeo Bimbi, pittore mediceo (Florence: Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche, 1982). 13 Bajard and Bencini, Villas and Gardens of Tuscany, 10-11. 188 court from 1642-51, and her patrons paid her a monthly stipend. 14 Even after Garzoni left Florence, she continued to send miniature paintings, drawings, and designs for pietre dure to the Medici. 15 Only a year before her death in 1670, Garzoni wrote a letter to Ferdinand II requesting precious medicinal oil that would help cure her illnesses indicating an enduring relationship with the Grand Duke long after she was employed by the Medici. 16 Perhaps not inconsequentially, Garzoni’s works were often intended for the Grand Duchess, including one of her few signed miniatures, an image of Vittoria’s lap dog (Figure 3.1). 17 14 Casale, Giovanna Garzoni, 11-25. Casale also proposes the possibility that Garzoni may have departed the Medici court as late as 1662. This canine portrait captures the animal at rest and adorned with a collar of jingling bells. This work, like her fruit and vegetable miniatures, blends genres and emphasizes consumption. Bits of crusty bread and a biscuit are arrayed before the dog alongside a white china cup with floral designs. Two flies gain their nourishment from the abandoned biscuit. Garzoni constructed a portrait of one of Vittoria’s beloved dogs that is directly tied to the creature’s diet—a theme that is echoed in the Poggio Imperiale miniatures. 15 Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, “‘La femminil pazienza’: Women Painters and Natural History in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” in Therese O’Malley, Therese and Amy R.W. Meyers, eds. The Art of Natural History: Illustrated Treatises and Botanical Paintings, 1400-1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 168. 16 ASF, Mediceo del Principato 1082, folio 1603. Entry 18316 in the Medici Archive Project Documentary Sources database, http://documents.medici.org/document_details.cfm?entryid=18316. Furthermore, an account book in the Accademia di San Luca records her work for the Medici from 1646 onwards. Laura Vanni, “Giovanna Garzoni (cat. no. 25),” in Rodolfo Battistini, Bonita Cleri, Claudio Giardini, et al, L’Anima e le cose: La natura morta nell’Italia pontifica nel XVII e XVIII secolo (Modena: Artioli, 2001), 107. 17 In fact, one of her few signed works is a portrait of Vittoria’s lap dog. See Casale, ed., Giovanna Garzoni, 98. 189 Ferdinand II (1610-70, ruled 1628-70) inherited reign from his mother Maria Maddalena and grandmother Cristina of Lorraine who had served as regents in his stead after the death of his father, Cosimo II. 18 Ferdinand II’s marriage to Vittoria della Rovere (1622-94) in 1637 allowed for further expansion of the Medici’s art collections and access to artists. 19 Despite claims to absolutist rule, the Medici court in the seventeenth century found itself in a precarious situation of weakening military and political power burdened by strained finances. 20 Saving face and establishing a powerful position through artistic patronage became increasingly important as the faltering duchy attempted to assert its importance via ever more lavish displays of visual magnificence. 21 During Ferdinand’s reign the Palazzo Pitti and Boboli Gardens underwent major reconstructions and restorations, creating a need for art to fill the newly refurbished galleries. 22 18 Cosimo II and Maria Maddalena had eight children: Maria Cristina, Ferdinand II, Giovan Carlo, Margherita, Mattias, Francesco, Anna, and Leopold. Maria Cristina lived out her brief life in a convent while the first born son Ferdinando took rule of Tuscany as the Grand Duke. Giovan Carlo became a Cardinal in 1644. Margherita would be married to Odoardo Farnese in 1628, strengthening ties between the Medici and Farnese families. Mattias pursued a military career and died at the age of 54, Francesco also fought in battle with Mattias, and Anna was married to Ferdinando Carlo d'Austria. Youngest son Leopold was also a cardinal and deeply involved with natural philosophy at the Medici court. Historian Jay Tribby notes that the Pitti Palace and its 19 On Ferdinand II’s patronage see Mina Gregori, ed., Pittura nella Firenze di Ferdinando II de’ Medici, exh. cat. (Milan: Marco Voena, 2003). 20 For more information on Ferdinand’s military strategies, see Niccolo Capponi, “Le Palle di Marte: Military Strategy and Diplomacy in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany under Ferdinand II de' Medici (1621- 1670)” The Journal of Military History 68, no. 4 (October, 2004): 1105-41. 21 On seventeenth-century Medici patronage see: Paola Barocchi and Giovanna Gaeta Bertelà, eds., Collezionismo mediceo e storia artistica (Florence: Studio per edizione scelte, 2002); Edward L. Goldberg, After Vasari: History, Art, and Patronage in Late Medici Florence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988); Il Seicento fiorentino: Arte a Firenze da Ferdinando I a Cosimo III. exh. cat. (Florence: Cantini, 1986); Mina Gregori, ed., Pittura nella Firenze di Ferdinando II de’ Medici (Milan: Marco Voena, 2003); Jo Ann Conklin, ed., Crafting the Medici: Patrons and Artisans in Florence, 1537- 1737 (Providence, R.I.: David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, 1999). 190 mass expenditure of goods both man-made and from nature served as a center of Medici excess. He places their trafficking in the wonder, novelty, and experimentation of the natural world within this context of conspicuous consumption. 23 The Medici court pursued their interests in natural philosophy by developing botanical gardens, laboratories for experimentation, and supporting naturalists. The dukes most notoriously funded natural philosopher Galileo Galilei, despite the fact that his Medici-provided home became a place of enclosure due to papal concerns. Medici villa life was also a part of this culture of consumption, another site where art and natural philosophy engaged with gastronomic and culinary interests but in a rural setting where huge gardens and crops were cultivated. 24 Both Cosimo II (who studied under Galileo) and Ferdinand II developed a personal interest in natural philosophy. Ferdinand’s brothers, Cardinals Giovan Carlo (1611-63) and Leopold (1617-75), also maintained a significant interest in the natural sciences and supported its practitioners. 25 22 Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi and Gretchen A. Hirschauer, The Flowering of Florence: Botanical Art for the Medici, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2002), 75. Giovan Carlo was particularly drawn to botanical and 23 Jay Tribby, “Club Medici: Natural Experiment and the Imagineering of ‘Tuscany,’” Configurations 2 (1994): 228. 24 Edward L. Goldberg, Patterns in Late Medici Art Patronage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 8. 25 For Giovan Carlo, Mattias, and Leopoldo see Paola Barocchi and Giovanna Gaeta Bertelà, Collezionismo mediceo e storia artistica: Il cardinale Giovan Carlo, Mattias e Leopoldo: 1628 – 1667 (Florence: SPES, 2002). On Giovan Carlo de’Medici, see Silvia Mascalchi, “Le collezioni di Giovan Carlo de' Medici: Una vicenda del seicento fiorentino riconsiderata alla luce dei documenti” (Ph.D. dissertation, Università degli studi di Firenze, 1984); Sara Mamone, Serenissimi fratelli principi impresari: notizie di spettacolo nei carteggi medicei: carteggi di Giovan Carlo de' Medici e di Desiderio Montemagni suo segretario, 1628-1664 (Florence: Le lettere, 2003); Mascalchi, “Giovan Carlo de'Medici: An outstanding but neglected collector in seventeenth century Florence,” Apollo, 120, no. 272 191 horticultural interests (including his prized collection of rare flowers), and Garzoni created many of her floral still lifes for him. 26 Garzoni’s presence at the Medici court during the mid-seventeenth century possibly coincided with the 1657 founding of the Accademia del Cimento by students of Galileo such as Francesco Redi. Ferdinand and Leopoldo helmed and financially supported this society and actively participated in experiments until the close of the academy in 1667. The Accademia in many ways brought early naturalist activities to Florence after the Rome-based Accademia dei Lincei disbanded in 1630. The Accademia del Cimento published one proceeding: Saggi di natvrali esperienze fatte nell'Accademia del cimento sotto la protezione del serenissimo principe Leopoldo di Toscana e descritte dal segretario di essa accademia first in 1667 and subsequently in 1691. 27 The work was printed several other times in Italy and also in England. 28 As with festival books and commemorative editions, the Saggi were presented to courts throughout Europe as symbols of Medici power and demonstrations of prestigious, cutting-edge knowledge that could be applied to practical problems. 29 (October 1984): 268-72. For Leopold’s patronage see Miriam Fileti, Giovanna Gaeta Bertelà and Paola Barocchi, Il Cardinal Leopoldo (Milan: R. Ricciardi, 1987). Bringing 26 Tongiorgi Tomasi and Hirschauer, The Flowering of Florence, 76. 27 Lorenzo Magalotti, Saggi di natvrali esperienze fatte nell'Accademia del cimento sotto la protezione del serenissimo principe Leopoldo di Toscana e descritte dal segretario di essa accademia (Florence: Giuseppe Cocchini, 1667). 28 Essayes of natural experiments: made in the Academie del cimento. Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell'Accademia del cimento, trans. Richard Waller (London: Benjamin Alsop, 1684). 29 Marco Beretta, “At the Source of Western Science: The Organization of Experimentalism at the Accademia del Cimento (1657-1667),” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 54, no. 2 (May 2000): 133. 192 together noted practitioners of medicine, astronomy, physics and mathematics, the Accademia emphasized public experimentation and the integral use of instruments to experimental practices. 30 This promotion of understanding the natural world via the use of tools and instruments offers a parallel to Scappi and other cooks’ staging of tools for the kitchen to enhance authority and knowledge through the use and display of these specialized devices. Marco Beretta observes that the Accademia del Cimento ultimately “guaranteed the scientists the possibility of doing research without the torments of economic uncertainty, and...urged the state to perceive the strategic potential of natural philosophy.” 31 He notes that the Accademia del Cimento enjoyed the founding by and participation of Ferdinand and Leopold whereas another, more well-known institution established around the same time, the Accademia della Crusca, was developed and run by scholars alone. The Crusca, whose members systematically worked to promote and systematize the Tuscan language, did enjoy the patronage of the Grand Duke but not the prestige of his direct involvement. 32 30 Indeed, the Istituto e Museo della Scienza in Florence still houses hundreds of the Accademia’s instruments and many documents of correspondence and minutes. See examples at their website: http://fermi.imss.fi.it/rd/bd?lng=en&progetto=583 and also in Maria Celeste Cantù, The Antique Instruments of the Museum of History of Science in Florence (Florence: Arnaud, 1986). Therefore, a particular interest in emerging natural philosophy and experimentation over more established forms of scholarship (as represented by the Crusca) was evident in the princes’ support of the Cimento. This was paralleled by the court’s patronage of artists such as Giovanna Garzoni who incorporated specific elements of these interests in aesthetic objects. 31 Beretta, “At the Source of Western Science,” 148. 32 Goldberg, Patterns in Late Medici Art Patronage, 13. 193 Scholars have long identified princely courts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as loci of innovation in natural philosophy and early sciences. This shift from universities to networks of princely patronage fundamentally shaped the values of both scientific discovery and the behavior of scientists. 33 At court, all activities rotated around one goal: the reification of princely power and dominion. Therefore, everything from banqueting to hunting to patronage of arts and sciences served to express this idea of natural rule. Mario Biagoli’s account of Galileo’s self fashioning as a courtier- scientist offers an argument for the embedded nature of natural philosophy and courtly politicking. 34 Medici patronage did not reward authors of scientific theories or proponents of research programs but appreciated marvels that fit the discourse of the court and contributed to legitimizing the Medici image. Consequently, Galileo could be rewarded as a celestial ambassador of the Medici glory but not as a Copernican astronomer. Perhaps the most salient example is Galileo’s dedication of the “Medicean stars” in his Sidereus nuncius (1610) to Cosimo II (Ferdinand’s father). According to Biagoli, this indicates both the typical Medicean relationship to science and the scientists’ exploitation of courtly codes of conduct. He observes: 35 During this period of time, Medici support was available for naturalists to pursue experiments, develop collections, and conduct studies that articulated new knowledge based on first-hand observation—as long as their findings did not disturb the teachings 33 William Eamon, "Court, Academy and Printing House: Patronage and Scientific Careers in Late- Renaissance Italy," in Patronage and Institutions: Science, Technology, and Medicine at the European Court, 1500-1750, ed. Bruce T. Moran (Rochester, N.Y.: The Boydell Press, 1991), 27-8. In this article, Eamon also characterizes courtly science as defined by the metaphor of the “hunt” for nature’s secrets. 34 Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 35 Ibid., 149. 194 of the church or Medici dominion. The Medici crest adorned many texts of natural philosophy and medicine, including the Ricettario fiorentino, an official text of pharmacology that was reprinted many times. The Medici coat of arms is displayed in the back matter of the 1623 and 1670 editions (Figure 3.2). It remains one of the most fundamental early modern documents of pharmaceutical practice and the lavish 1623 edition is large-scale and includes many illustrations. 36 It describes the professions of speziali and medici (apothecaries and doctors) and their practices before moving on to list of herbs and other ingredients along with recipes for preparing them. This book is a document of the connections between diet and medicine, and it resembles the other (more exclusively culinary) texts studied in my project in both subject matter and structure. The title page is framed by architectural elements and prominently displays the Medici palle (Figure 3.3). The image represents two men who are presumably apothecaries, one of whom examines an illustrated herbal, a gesture that underlines the fundamental importance of print and image for producing and procuring knowledge in early modern Italy. Swags of fruits and vegetables allude to the use of such natural ingredients for medication, and a watchful Madonna and Child ensure the validity of the work in the eyes of the church. At the top and bottom of the page, putti scamper and play amongst tools for distillation which is another instance of the representation and validation of a craft via its equipment. 37 36 Ricettario Fiorentino (Florence: Vincenzio Vangelisti and Pietro Matini, 1623). The Ricettario fiorentino serves as but one example of the intrinsic linkage between food and medicine for seventeenth-century 37 Inside the book, labeled illustrations show ovens and other tools and bear similarity to the Scappi illustrations. 195 Italians. Herbs and other foodstuffs were ground and cooked into medicines, and the presentation of medical and pharmaceutical knowledge included culinary information. Cosimo I had founded a herbal garden at the University of Pisa in the sixteenth century, and later he developed one in Florence at San Marco. 38 Ferdinand kept up with these interests, employing botanists such as Paolo Boccone (1633-1704) to design and supplement the gardens. 39 Boccone advocated a more experimental use of botany and produced several treatises on plants and herbs, including Icones & descriptiones rariorum plantarum Siciliæ, Melitæ, Galliæ, & Italiæ (Oxford, 1674). 40 In 1684, an Englishman reviewed Boccone’s treatise, noting the benefits of his discovery of new species of plants for medicinal purposes but also emphasizing its lack of method: “there is none at all observed in it, the Species being promiscuously and indiscreetly placed as they came to Hand, without any Order or Connexion.” 41 Garzoni was supported by the Medici under a very different guise than a botanist like Boccone—her prestige as a famous woman artist likely ensured her This critique aligned with a seventeenth-century desire among certain natural philosophers for greater categorization and method within the field of botany. However, Tuscan botanists were bound to a discussion of the natural world that would benefit the Medici dominion. 38 Monica Amari, Giardini regali: Fascino e immagini del verde nelle grandi dinastie: Dai Medici agli Asburgo (Milan: Electa, 1998); Mila Mastrorocco, Le mutazioni di Proteo: I giardini medicei del Cinquecento (Florence: Sansoni, 1981). 39 Findlen, Possessing Nature, 7. 40 Paolo Boccone, Icones & descriptiones rariorum plantarum Siciliæ, Melitæ, Galliæ, & Italiæ (Oxford: E Theatro Sheldoniano, 1674). 41 John Ray, “An Account of a Book,” Philosophical Transactions (1683-1775) 20 (1698): 463. 196 patronage. She was backed by other powerful patrons including Cassiano dal Pozzo in Rome whose network of artists, naturalists, physicians, antiquarians, and scholars was immense. Garzoni’s securing of his patronage opened many doors. 42 They met in Rome, and dal Pozzo became a steadfast supporter of Garzoni’s work, helping her with patronage and commissions. 43 He provided her access to the vast resources of the Accademia dei Lincei, where she likely studied specimens and scientific illustrations in its library. 44 After training in botanical illustration in Rome, she produced an illustrated herbal that consisted of floral images from various periods in her artistic development. She copied from the illustrations of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s herbal, and her awareness of this text will be useful in understanding the Poggio Imperiale works. 45 42 O’Malley and Meyers, eds., The Art of Natural History,167. Casale indicates that her relationship with dal Pozzo stimulated the artist’s interest in natural philosophy; Casale, Giovanna Garzoni, 21-2. Another female artist who was deeply involved with botanical exploration was Maria Sybilla Merian, and for recent scholarship on her work see Ella Reitsma, Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: J.P. Getty Museum, 2008). Garzoni was an experienced botanical illustrator who, despite the limited access of her gender, secured powerful patrons and gained access to Italy’s first scientific academy. She leveraged her knowledge to combine botany and still life in her depictions of fruits and vegetables. 43 R. Ward Bissell took note of letters exchanged between Artemesia Gentileschi and Garzoni regarding dal Pozzo’s patronage, showing some kinship between the two artists. Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art: Critical Reading and Catalogue Raisonné (University Park, PA.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 57-58. 44 Vanni, “Giovanna Garzoni (cat. no. 25),” 107. On the Lincei, see David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 45 Tongiorgi Tomasi, “La femminil pazienza,” 167. Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi & Baldassar Costantini, 1557). 197 At the Medici court, early herbal illustration was largely shaped by the work of Jacopo Ligozzi (1547-1627). Ligozzi, who worked for Francesco I, served as an influence for all subsequent botanists at the Medici court. Garzoni executed works that are technically similar to his examinations of single plants, in the style of botanical illustration but enlivened with delicate color. 46 For example, Ligozzi’s Anemones and Garzoni’s Ranunculus (Ranunculus asiaticus) with Two Almonds and a European Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa violacea) share a similar method of illustrating the flower (Figures 3.4 and 3.5). However, Garzoni’s images of this type tend to include insects, nuts, or fruit along with the flower. These often edible additions link such images to the Poggio Imperiale series, and they also display Garzoni’s methods of differentiating her work from strictly botanical illustration. She had previously demonstrated her proficiency in the medium in an early album (housed at Dumbarton Oaks) that contains fifty watercolors of plants, each labeled with their scientific name and reference. 47 46 Parallel to this development of herbals was the development of more decorative texts, florilegium, that included illustrations of flowers and plants more for aesthetic purposes. Wilfrid Blunt noted a merging of these types in the sixteenth century, citing Jacopo Ligozzi as an example of this combination of botanical knowledge and aesthetically appealing illustrations. Wilfrid Blunt, The Illustrated Herbal (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1994), 96. These illustrations reveal knowledge of botany and its currents of thought as well as her competence at employing a recognized format. However, in the later works destined for Poggio Imperiale, Garzoni consciously created a different type of image, fusing genres to present wholly original works that combine botanical and culinary knowledge. 47 A. Mongan, "A Fete of Flowers: Women Artist's Contribution to Botanical Illustration," Apollo London 119, no. 266 (1984): 35. 198 The tiny insects depicted alongside the fruits and vegetables in the Poggio Imperiale works must be linked to the new technologies of looking and their demonstrated importance for natural philosophy and experimentation. Open pomegranate in a dish, with grasshoppers, snail, and two cherries (Figure 3.6) shows a grasshopper perched atop the leaves of a split-open pomegranate and a snail hovering on the edge of the bowl. The grasshopper is accurately rendered down to the minute fibers of its wings and tiny joints of its legs. This detail suggests the need to use of a relatively new invention, the microscope. Even if Garzoni did not actually use a microscope (there is no evidence to decisively suggest if she did or did not), her work speaks to the significant influence of its lens. After the invention of this tool, the sciences and arts had a new vision of reality, and microscopic views of insects and plants became widely popular. 48 These new modes of viewing were vital for Garzoni’s work, as scholars have determined that she often utilized a convex mirror, a common artist’s tool, to execute these works. 49 Francesco Stelluti published his Tuscan translation of Persius in 1630, a work whose notes discuss various accomplishments of his fellow Linceans, such as the use of the microscope. 50 48 Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, "The Study of Natural Sciences and Botanical and Zoological Illustration in Tuscany Under the Medici from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries," Archives of Natural History 28, no. 2 (2001): 186. This illustration of the bee and its legs, head, and antennae shows microscopic views that presented the creature with a clarity that was unprecedented in print (Figure 3.7). It is a potent example of the 49 Casale, Giovanna Garzoni, 27. 50 Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx, 186-7. 199 newly discovered power of the printed image to convey and diagram complex information. 51 Garzoni’s inclusion of the minutely jointed grasshopper exploits her skill as a miniaturist to include these newly resonant details. 52 In Florence, Garzoni would deeply understand the Medici’s interest in the range of early scientific activities. Another important figure for natural philosophy at the Medici court was Francesco Redi (1626-98), member of the Accademia della Crusca and Cimento and the court physician (appointed in 1671), naturalist, linguist, and poet. He organized public experiments at the Medici court and was largely influential in promoting an experiment-based method of acquiring knowledge about the natural world. 53 He published several treatises including Esperienze intorno a diverse cose naturali in 1671 and Osservazioni di Francesco Redi accademico della Crusca intorno agli animali viventi che si trovano negli animali viventi on parasites in 1684. 54 51 On Stelluti’s text and bee imagery see David Freedberg, “Iconography between the History of Art and the History of Science: Art, Science, and the Case of the Urban Bee” in Picturing Science, Producing Art, ed. Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison (New York: Routledge, 1998), 272-296. His Bacco in Toscana praised Tuscan wines and described the virtues of drinking them. It also served as marker of shared knowledge and exchange between natural philosophers 52 Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx, 189-91. 53 Hans W. Hubert, “‘Cosmic Delight’: Bartolomeo Bimbi and the Representation of Nature at the Court of Cosimo III de’Medici,” in O’Malley and Meyers, eds., The Art of Natural History, 45. 54 Francesco Redi, Esperienze intorno a diverse cose naturali (Florence: All’Insegna della NAVE, 1671) and Osservazioni di Francesco Redi accademico della Crusca intorno agli animali viventi che si trovano negli animali viventi (Florence: Piero Matini, 1684). 200 and cooks as the text describes hot chocolate and included recipes for other sweet drinks. 55 The Medici’s interest in experimentation extended into many realms of court life; cimenti, or experiments, went far beyond the official academies of natural philsophy and often were performed at the dinner table. These cimenti della tavola were informal games of conversation, wit, and erudition that could solidify a courtier’s rank or hinder his elevation and were often based on the foods or wine served at the meal. 56 Many “experimental” Tuscan texts were shaped by a desire to engage in witty courtly discourse and appeal to these diversions. One example, Lorenzo Bellini’s Gustus organum (Bologna, 1665), even diagrammed the tongue to both to locate flavor recognition and search for anatomical reasons for refined Tuscan “taste.” 57 Medici interest in natural philosophy was intrinsically linked to its desire to utilize its findings for the ratification of absolutist power. These practices were often linked to culinary or medical pursuits as food and the tools for its preparation were valuable currencies of early modern cultural capital. Medicine and emerging botany remained largely tied to diet and medicine—the identification, illustration, and It is clear that natural philosophy as articulated in print or practiced at court cannot be divorced from culinary or gastronomic discourses. 55 Francesco Redi, Bacco in Toscana (Florence: P. Matini, 1685). 56 Jay Tribby, “Dante’s Restaurant: The Cultural Work of Experiment in Early Modern Tuscany,” in The Consumption of Culture, 1600-1800: Image, Object, Text, eds. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer (London: Routledge, 1995), 327. 57 Lorenzo Bellini, Gustus organum (Bologna: Typis Pisarrianis, 1665). Tribby, “Dante’s Restaurant,” 328. 201 description of plants was never far from explanation of culinary and medicinal uses. The emergence of professionalized and increasingly refined culinary activities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries not only utilized tropes of early natural philosophers (codification and experimentation) but also relied on a tradition of classifying and identifying products of the natural world for human consumption. Garzoni’s works allude to discourses of medicine and botany but also gastronomy. Curiously, Medici’s patronage of the culinary arts is less documented than at other courts; none of their cooks or stewards published treatises or achieved fame outside Florence. However, like the other elite circles of Europe, the Medici and their academies utilized public events and banquets to demonstrate the court’s opulence which were often held at villas such as the Poggio Imperiale. As such, the information about the courtly period appetite described in the previous chapters is essential for understanding Garzoni’s works. This section will identify several books relevant to Garzoni’s works and show how herbal, agricultural, and gastronomic treatises all combined information that helps illuminate the tastes of seventeenth-century viewers. Culinary information was found in treatises devoted to recipes, menus, and kitchen management as well as in books aimed at aspiring carvers and stewards. By asserting their practical knowledge in printed form, emerging professional cooks and household officials claimed expertise and authority via these texts (and their illustrations) which employed similar strategies as books that recorded and produced natural philosophy. Both codified and standardized Picturing and Consuming the Natural World: Herbals and Culinary Information 202 nomenclature and tools, diagrammed complex spaces and information, and provided (ostensibly) reproducible knowledge. However, information about foods and their effects on the body was found in a much wider realm of print culture that included herbals. Historian Agnes Arber was one of the first scholars to trace changes in the emerging practice of botany in the early modern period. She observed three major shifts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with important ramifications for not only botany but also the classification and dissemination of natural knowledge. 58 First, naturalists began developing systems of classification and categorization, and second, the format of herbals was changing from manuscripts to printed, illustrated books. Finally, images and descriptions of plants from life took on a fundamental importance as a register of validity, where previous authors had repeated primarily ancient sources. 59 Perhaps the most well-known example of this shift is Leonhard Fuchs, whose De Historia Stirpium of 1542 was unique in its insistence on veracity of illustration. 60 Fuchs emphasized that his illustrations were drawn from life, rather than re-used from previous texts, and his work directly acknowledges the roles of its illustrators by including their portraits (Figure 3.8). 61 58 Agnes Arber, Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 27-42. This parallels similar developments in other 59 Ibid. 60 See Sachiko Kusukawa, “Leonhart Fuchs on the Importance of Pictures,” Journal of the History of Ideas 58.3 (1997): 403-27 and Kusukawa and Ian Maclean, Transmitting Knowledge: Words, Images, and Instruments in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 61 Sachiko Kusukawa, “Illustrating Nature,” in Books and the Sciences in History, ed. Marina Frasca- Spada and Nick Jardine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 101. 203 fields such as medicine and anatomy, recalling the near-simultaneous printing of Vesalius’ Fabrica and the centrality of image in its production. However, like the Fabrica, although De Historia Stirpium claimed the authority of first-hand observation, the illustrations were drawn either from old models or were modified (for example, a plant would be shown in different stages of growth in one illustration). This temporal compression of plant life perhaps served as a defense against those who criticized the ability of images to properly convey the many stages of a plant’s life span. Fuchs’s Crocus, for example, was shown in both the flowering and post-flower stages in order to convey the differing characteristics of the plant at diverse moments in its development (Figure 3.9). 62 His methods of illustration attempted to provide the reader a generalized depiction of plant characteristics at varying stages for ease of identification. 63 In the late sixteenth century, controversies regarding the usefulness of image as opposed to text questioned the construction of botanical knowledge. Naturalists debated the relative validity of ancient descriptions, printed illustrations (that were necessarily limited) and drawings from living specimens. The increasing insistence on the authenticity of herbal illustrations underlines a shift in knowledge production that relied on the results of first-hand experience through engraving or painting, creating a 62 Gill Saunders, Picturing Plants: An Analytical History of Botanical Illustration (Berkeley: University of California Press in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1995), 27. 63 Alain Touwaide, “Botany and Humanism in the Renaissance: Background, Interaction, Contradictions,” in O’Malley and Meyers, eds., The Art of Natural History, 45. 204 new role for the illustrator and image in the construction of natural knowledge. 64 Knowledge about the natural world was produced and shared through collections, courts, universities, artisanal practice, apothecaries, folk remedies, and culinary experimentation. Botanical exploration became an important feature of colonizing the newly discovered Americas, as courts throughout Europe sent both naturalists and illustrators to gather, evaluate, illustrate, and bring back specimens. This scientific exploration was in the interest of establishing taxonomies and furthering classification and knowledge of plant life in the new lands, but, perhaps more importantly, finding profitable medicinal and culinary plants, herbs, and spices. Such discourses on the validity of ancient knowledge and first-hand observation were common in texts across the various disciplines that loosely comprised early modern natural philosophy: medicine, alchemy, astrology, gastronomy, and agriculture as well as cookery and kitchen management. 65 Early modern herbals covered not only the properties of plants and herbs but also their utility as comestibles. I will show how image and text together emphasized this purpose by examining two of the most well-known and frequently reprinted Italian herbals, those of Pietro Andrea Mattioli and Castore Durante. Information from these books is also necessary for understanding seventeenth-century ideas about the qualities and uses of the particular fruits that Garzoni depicted, and, therefore, I will return to 64 For an excellent recent overview of these issues, see: O’Malley and Meyers, eds., The Art of Natural History. 65 Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan, eds., Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew, eds., Science and Empire in the Atlantic World (New York: Routledge, 2008). 205 them later in this chapter. Mattioli’s commentary of the ancient authority Dioscorides was illustrated and reprinted numerous times, representing one kind of herbal still reliant on ancient authority but influential nonetheless for its additions of information from practical field experience. 66 Mattioli, an active participant of the epistolary exchange between doctors and botanists, emphasized the usefulness of image in the many editions of his work. 67 His commentary (first printed in Venice, 1544) was eventually illustrated with over 500 woodcuts and was a widely distributed and popular book. 68 However, the prints for Mattioli’s popular treatise tended to rely more on the exigencies of the woodblock than a desire for botanical accuracy as they conform to rectangular spaces for ease of insertion in the text. 69 Mattioli’s commentary and images of other edible aspects of the natural world further supports the claim that his treatise was a significant source of information on dietary habits and asserted them as an essential part of natural knowledge (Figure 3.10). A woodcut of a wolf and two rams accompanies assertions that the livers of several It is important to recall that his approach differed somewhat from Fuchs as Mattioli continued to rely on ancient texts, in this case Dioscorides, and did not insist upon the same image-making “from life” or from first-hand experience. His illustrators employed a more patterned or decorative style, with few distinguishing characteristics between plants. 66 On Mattioli, see John Bidwell, Mattioli’s Herbal (New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, 2003) and the appendix of Sara Ferri and Francesca Vannozzi, I Giardini dei semplici e gli orti botanici della Toscana (Perugia: Quattroeme, 1993). 67 Kusukawa, “Illustrating Nature,” 107. 68 Gavin D.R. Bridson and Donald E. Wendel, Printmaking in the Service of Botany (Pittsburgh: Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, 1986), 25. 69 Saunders, Picturing Plants: An Analytical History of Botanical Illustration, 33. 206 animals (donkey, goat, wild boar, and goose) are very healthful and should be roasted and eaten to cure many ailments, including serpent and bird bites. He similarly outlines the benefits of many types of fish as well as other products. Several of these woodcuts, such as that of uova (showing hens laying eggs in a basket), alludes to domesticated farming and agricultural practices. Such illustrations and text thus emphasize the varying products of the natural world (both wild and domesticated), principally communicating their usefulness to man as consumable goods. This is important in conceptualizing seventeenth-century botanical practice in relation to Garzoni’s works. Castore Durante’s herbal was first published in 1585 and the woodcuts that illustrate his work were proudly touted by the author. Durante’s Herbario nuovo was reprinted many times, and the title page of a 1636 edition announces that the book will contain: images that represented the live plants that are from all of Europe, and the East and West Indies, and Latin verses that explain the medical use of the herbs, with discourses that show the names, species, forms, places, temperature, qualities and miraculous virtues of the herbs, together with the weight and order of using them, showing the various secrets and remedies to cure the most difficult infirmities. 70 Compared to Mattioli’s book, Durante’s text is more formally organized, with each entry outlining the name, species, forms, location, qualities and virtues of the plant. He mixes information primarily from ancient sources such as Galen and Dioscorides. Art historian Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi has recently shown that Durante commissioned Roman artist Isabella Cattani Parasole to draw the illustrations which were then 70 Castore Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice: I Giunti, 1636). 207 engraved by her husband. 71 Both Durante and Mattioli’s texts and images underline the centrality of culinary practice to the shaping and production of natural knowledge. At the end of the 1684 edition of Herbario nuovo there are pages of “figures added without discourse” representing an extensive array including plants, trees, vinegars, dairy products, insects, and even a basket of clams (Figures 3.11 and 3.12). Like Mattioli’s herbal, the plants and herbs are illustrated in Durante’s book with small rectangular engravings that are set alongside the text, but these illustrations even more clearly link botanical reference with gastronomic or medicinal utility. 72 71 Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, “La femminil pazienza,” 163. These are united by a uniformity of size but the style of illustration ranges quite widely. The image of cheese displays a remarkable symmetry and use of linear perspective while retaining an unrealistically decorative composition. A cheesemaker (this figure resembles the images of cooks in Scappi and Messisbugo’s books) is shown at work with his basket of ricotta, bowls of milk and lumps of drying cheese displayed on a table. The woodcut for the cinnamon tree deftly alludes to the east-west spice trade with a turbaned figure at the right overseeing a maritime scene, all dominated by a large branch displaying the leaves and berries of the tree. Pieces of rolled-up bark, or cinnamon sticks as they are used in cooking, are placed in the foreground to show the edible product of this tree. A melancholy sun’s rays shine on the scene, indicating the hot climate needed to grow this popular Renaissance spice. 72 Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice: I Giunti, 1636). Subsequent references are to this edition. 208 Durante and Mattioli’s works must be understood alongside other hybrid genres of books by physicians and herbalists that included natural philosophy and along with more explicit culinary applications. Baldassare Pisanelli’s Trattato della natura de cibi et del bere (Venice, 1587) though not illustrated, was a significant reference book of the properties, benefits and harms, humoral qualities, and natural histories of individual foodstuffs, ranging from fruits and vegetables to meats, fishes, spices, and wines. 73 Pisanelli, a Bolognese doctor who studied under Aldrovandi, compiled this reference book which was first printed in 1583 and reprinted many times. Another example is Ugo Benzi’s Regole della sanita et natura de’cibi which was written in the fifteenth century but reprinted first in 1618 and once bound with Pisanelli’s text. 74 A 1620 version (annotated by Lodovico Bertaldi) provides information about curing illness, exercise, proper eating, and sleeping, recommending “never to sleep immediately after eating, as it will aggravate the head and stomach...” 75 The humid and lubricating fruits, such as grapes, fresh figs, melons and similar, are permitted before every other food, and after those one should be sure to eat other foods, but one should leave those until they descend to the bottom of the stomach... As for figs and melons (two fruits seen in Garzoni’s miniatures): 76 73 Baldassare Pisanelli, Trattato della natura de' cibi et del bere (Venice: Gio. Battista Uscio, 1587; Reprint Bologna: Forni Editore, 1972). 74 Ugo Benzi, Regole della sanita et natura de’cibi (Turin: Gio. Domenico Tarino, 1620). For biographical information see Dean P. Lockwood, Ugo Benzi: Medieval Philosopher and Physician, 1376–1439 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951). 75 Benzi, Regole della sanita et natura de’cibi, 26. 76 Ibid., 55. 209 Benzi/Bertaldi’s text also includes an alphabetical listing of individual foodstuffs and their benefits according to Galen. The books by Pisanelli and Benzi represent a type of reference text that emulates some characteristics of properties of herbals (description and classification of herbs, fruits, and vegetables) but with a focus on cataloging alimentary and medicinal uses. Other examples (that have been coined texts of “gastronomic botany”) are Giacomo Castelvetro’s manuscript, the letters of Costanzo Felici in which he describes culinary properties of plants, and Salvatore Massonio’s published treatise which more specifically addresses vegetables and lettuces to be used for salads. 77 Early modern Italian cooking in particular was noted for its abundant use of fresh vegetables and herbs, and Tuscans were further known for their enjoyment of beans. 78 Giacomo Castelvetro, a Modenese expatriate living unhappily in London, wrote a chatty treatise on his native dietary habits, which he described as “a brief account of all the roots, all the green stuff and all the fruit that are eaten, raw and cooked, in Italy,” between 1613- 14. 79 77 Costanzo Felici, Scritti naturalistici: Vol. 1, Del’insalata e piante che in qualunque modo vengono per cibo del’homo (Manuscripts from 1569-1572), ed. G. Arbizzoni (Urbino: Quattro Venti, 1986); Salvatore Massonio, Archidipno; overo, Dell'insalata, e dell'uso di essa, trattato nuovo (Venice: Marc'Antonio Brogiollo, 1627); Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari, Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History, trans. Aine O'Healy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 35. Mary-Michelle DeCoste’s work in progress highlights these overlaps between botanical and gastronomic texts (as presented at Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, 2009). His entry for broad beans describes a simple preparation: 78 Ken Albala, Food in Early Modern Europe (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003), 119. 79 Giacomo Castelvetro, Breve racconto di tutte le radici, di tutte l'erbe e di tutti i frutti che crudi o cotti in Italia si mangiano (1614) MS Cambridge, Trinity College; Reprint, Mantova: Gianluigi Arcari, 1988. For an English translation, Giacomo Castelvetro, The Fruit, Herbs & Vegetables of Italy: An Offering to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, trans. Gillian Riley (London: Viking, 1989). 210 When broad beans start to become hard we cook them in water to loosen their skins, which we remove. Then we put the beans in a little pot with oil or fresh butter, and sweet herbs chopped very fine, and salt and pepper, as I described for hops. Some prefer to cook them with a few cloves of garlic, which gives them a wonderful flavour. 80 Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari observe that Castelvetro’s rhetoric is shaped by an idealizing homesickness and pride as he first points out the clever usage of arable lands in order to feed the masses of people, but then emphasizes the skill and culture needed to prepare and consume properly such greens. 81 Ultimately, these northern Italian texts argue for the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables to be a significant (and refined) component of upper-class culture. By the end of the sixteenth century, Italian elites saw the consumption of salads and fresh produce as an essential component of their culinary identities. 82 One book, the result of a stay in the Medici environs of the Tuscan countryside, attempts to present a totalizing view of the universe in which the elements of the earth are harnessed as fodder for man’s table. Printed in Florence in 1668, Teodoro Albmair’s discussion of the four elements offers a totalizing vision for the organization and articulation of minerals, animals, and plants of the natural world, and his construction is careful to include precise culinary information. 83 80 Gillian Riley, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 107. In the introduction, it is noted that the Tirolean author, escaping from his warring country, spent time at a 81 Capatti and Montanari, Italian Cuisine, 40. 82 Laura Giannetti, “Italian Renaissance Food-Fashioning or the Triumph of Greens,” California Italian Studies Journal 1, no. 2 (2010): 1-16. 83 Teodoro Albmair, I quattro elementi (Florence: Insegna della Stella, 1668). 211 Tuscan villa where he indulged in the “contemplative life” of reading and writing. His text describes in great detail the processes of gardening and cultivating and discusses specific culinary qualities of herbs, plants, and animals. For example, pigs’ “meat is good fresh, and preserved, and one cannot make good food without pork meat, because it is that which gives the true flavoring to all foods.” 84 Other books that were collected in ducal libraries and illuminate the mileu of the aristocratic villa include treatises devoted to agriculture. These convey both information about the proper uses of various crops as well as how and where to plant them. Pietro Crescenzi and Agostino Gallo’s early texts proved extremely popular among elite libraries throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 85 In Florence, Giovanni Vittorio Soderini’s Trattato della coltivazione delle viti (1600) discusses grape cultivation and viticulture and is bound with a treatise on Tuscan cultivation by Bernardo Davanzati Bostichi and a defense of melons by Lionardo Giachini. 86 84 Albmair, I quattro elementi, 107. Handbooks of agriculture such as this one point to the increasing participation and interest of the upper classes in gardening and farming, despite the fact that such readers were surely not engaging in the hard labor themselves. Soderini and Bostichi’s texts 85 Pietro Crescenzi, Pietro Crescentio tradotto nouamente per M. Francesco Sansouino (Venice: Francesco Rampazetto, 1564); Agostino Gallo, Le vinti giornate dell’agricoltura (Venice: Camillo, & Rutilio Borgomineri, 1575). Other examples include: Giuseppe Falcone, La nuova, vaga, et dilettevole villa (Venice: Gio: Battista Bonfadino, 1619) and Leon Battista Alberti’s treatise on villa architecture, found in Opere volgari, ed. Cecil Grayson (Bari: G. Laterza, 1960-73). For an analysis of the impact of Crescenzi and Gallo’s texts, including a use discussion of the readership of the works, see Mauro Ambrosoli, The Wild and the Sown: Botany and Agriculture in Western Europe: 1350-1850, trans. Mary McCann Salvatorelli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 86 Giovanni Vittorio Soderini, Trattato della coltivazione delle viti (Florence: Filippo Giunti, 1600). 212 promote notions of Tuscan bounty during a time of actual famine and hardship in the non-elite countryside. I use these printed sources to offer insight into the subject matter and style of Giovanna Garzoni’s paintings for the Medici. Garzoni likely used and copied from an edition of Mattioli’s text, evincing her familiarity with such literature, and elite viewers of the works in the privileged spaces of Ferdinand II’s Villa Poggio Imperiale would have also been knowledgeable of such literature and changing conceptions of the natural world in terms of its use to humans. 87 Garzoni’s still life paintings not only capture edible fruits and vegetables arrayed in decorative platters and vessels but they also directly engage with discourses of botanical illustration and cultivation, a courtly culture of experiment and witty erudition, as well as gastronomic and medical debates. She was known as the “insigne miniatrice” because the bulk of her output was small-scale works on parchment or vellum, a scale and medium that was deemed culturally appropriate for female artists. The Poggio Imperiale Miniatures 88 87 Tongiorgi Tomasi, “La femminil pazienza,” 167. She typically employed a pointillist technique, creating detailed renditions of fruit or flowers with tiny dots of pigment. Her oeuvre engages a variety of genres: botanical illustration, still lifes, flower paintings, portraits, and small scale copies of famous 88 Casale, Giovanna Garzoni, 24. Casale indicates the difficulty of placing Garzoni in a school or of characterizing her work with a specific adjective. However, it has been rightly noted that this set of works on vellum bear a remarkable similarity to the paintings of Octavianus Monfort (documented in Torino from 1646-96) who mostly likely saw Garzoni’s works left behind at the court of Vittorio Amedeo I. See Godi, ed., Fasto e rigore, 123. 213 works. 89 As with many early modern female artists, biographical details of Garzoni’s life are difficult to pin down. 90 Her birth was recorded in Ascoli, and she died in Rome in 1670, leaving her estate to the Accademia San Luca. According to eighteenth- century biographer Lione Pascoli, Garzoni achieved remarkable success and “sold her work for whatever price she wished.” 91 She circulated primarily among Italian courts, including those of Rome, Naples and Turin, and was recognized and commended among her contemporaries as an exemplary female artist. 92 Through her manipulation of a variety of genres and fields of knowledge, Garzoni was able to enter worlds that were typically reserved for men. Indeed, Steven Shapin notes women’s limited participation in emerging scientific exploration: 89 As for the question of stylistic influence, Jacopo Ligozzi is most frequently noted as a significant predecessor for botanical images produced in Florence. Bartolomeo Ligozzi and Jacopo da Empoli painted still lifes in Tuscany that treat similar subjects. Tongiorgi Tomasi and Hirschauer, The Flowering of Florence, 24. 90 In my consideration of Garzoni, I leave discussion of biography behind and focus on contextualizing her works. Scholarship on Renaissance female artists is frequently driven by a desire to categorize the women and their works, a practice which leads to conflicting approaches to a sensitive and sometimes politically charged area of art history. In deciphering issues around attribution, biography, and the canon, all too often the works are lost in the complex arguments surrounding the artist. For documentary evidence concerning Garzoni’s biography see Casale, Giovanna Garzoni and Francesca Bottacin, “Appunti per il soggiorno veneziano di Giovanna Garzoni: Documenti inediti,” Arte Veneta 52 (1998): 141-7. 91 Harris and Nochlin, eds., Women Artists, 135. 92 Most literature on the artist attempts to answer questions of artistic influence and development, and while acknowledging the importance of such studies, my approach will consider the content of works recorded in the Poggio Imperiale inventory in relation to currents of thought at the Medici court. Another scholar who has begun to link Garzoni’s works with the context of botanical research at the Medici court is Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, and I borrow her initial approach but pursue the more specific connections and argue for the centrality of culinary information in relation to Garzoni’s chosen subject matter. Tongiorgi Tomasi, “The Study of Natural Sciences and Botanical and Zoological Illustration in Tuscany under the Medici from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries;” Tongiorgi Tomasi and Hirschauer, The Flowering of Florence. Tongiorgi Tomasi, “La femminil pazienza” provides a closer look at the factors that allowed Garzoni, and other female artists, to succeed in this genre of painting. 214 the half of the European population that was female was in a position to participate in scientific culture scarcely at all, as was that overwhelming majority—of men and women—who were illiterate or otherwise disqualified from entering the venues of formal learning. 93 Garzoni’s carefully constructed images both engaged with and appealed to currents of scientific investigation prominent in seventeenth-century courtly culture, but did so in a format acceptable for the female artist, the miniature and still life. Through the production of works such as the Poggio Imperiale miniatures, she was able to engage with scientific discourses and become an active participant in courtly cultures of erudition. Garzoni, like other successful courtiers of her time, framed her persona and production in a way that would appeal to her courtly patrons. Garzoni’s evocative miniatures capture bowls of cherries, beans, figs, melons, strawberries, and pomegranates alongside almonds, walnuts, grasshoppers, and birds on rocky surfaces. 94 The miniatures were eventually displayed as a group in the Stanza dell’Aurora, a room celebrating the treasures of the earth, and cannot be dated more specifically than the period she was in Florence. The paintings were perhaps originally intended for Ferdinand II, but, as previously discussed, they are cited in a later inventory of Vittoria’s possessions at the Villa Poggio Imperiale and were likely passed on to her at Ferdinand’s death. 95 93 Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 8. Although the size of the paintings ranges slightly, they 94 Consistent with my approach throughout this dissertation, I will not address religious or other symbolism in the works. Two sources for this topic are: Mirella Levi D’Ancona, The Gardens of the Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1977) and Lucia Impelluso, Nature and its Symbols, trans. Stephen Sartarelli (Los Angeles: J.P. Getty Museum, 2004). 95 Casale, Giovanna Garzoni, 62-5. 215 are all approximately 25 x 35 cm. Beans in a dish (Figure 3.13) shows the assured naturalism of Garzoni’s approach and is representative of the group. A simple crockery bowl barely contains a bunch of broad beans and their stems. The pods are not yet trimmed or prepared for cooking; the stringy ends attach stubbornly to the pale yellow beans, but six shelled beans in the foreground of the work display their edible state, ready to be cooked. As Tuscans were known for their fondness for beans, the inclusion of this seemingly rustic product conforms to a distinctively regional appetite. As in the pendant images, the bowl sits on an indeterminate, perhaps rocky ground, and is accompanied by nuts and flowers—in this case, almonds, seeds, and red and white carnations. The other works depict varying combinations of peaches, figs, cherries, plums, medlars, pomegranates, cucumbers, artichokes, melons, and grapes poised in shallow earthenware or china bowls. Birds, insects, flowers, and nuts are interspersed with the fruits and vegetables. The hybrid images fuse the genres of still life and botanical illustration. The small scale and delicate medium of parchment mark the works as luxury objects, and their display links them with objects of material culture. 96 96 The inventory listings do not attempt to qualify the works’ genre, but rather identify the works by their subject matter as is typical in documents from this period. The group as a whole represents a seemingly empirical observation of the fruits of the Tuscan earth yet Garzoni takes liberties with perspective and scale to heighten the uniformity and aesthetic beauty of the images. The works remain wholly original and difficult to classify, but this allows for their engagement with themes from botany, medicine, 216 culinary culture, and erudite courtly discourse. Their impact as a series should not be discounted—the set as a whole represents variety and bounty—but each composition is carefully constructed and individual works engage in different ways with discourses of natural philosophy and culinary culture. For example, a close examination of several works reveals key similarities to the illustrated works of Fuchs and other botanists, highlighting discourses in defense of the image as central to knowledge-making. Garzoni’s Blue bowl with strawberries, pears and grasshopper eating wheat grains (Figure 3.14), for instance, illuminates the many phases of the life of the plant in one image. Garzoni’s strawberries show varying stages of the fruit as the bowl contains a spectrum from unripened buds to overly ripe, almost rotting berries. Both green and yellowed leaves remain attached to the stems of fruit, capturing decidedly different moments in the vine’s growth pattern. The pears in the foreground are rotated in different directions to show the fruit’s profile and end views. Garzoni manipulated formal elements to ensure pleasing and balanced compositions. Take, for example, her Pears, grapes and snail in which the glistening orbs of tones ranging from green to red are placed with two pears in a very precise manner, with stems and leaves balancing out the composition (Figure 3.15). Here, especially, botanical realism is at the service of aesthetic demands. This recalls the woodcuts from Mattioli and Durante’s texts, which arrange large and unwieldy growth into a neat rectangular composition. Garzoni’s Palatina miniatures both engage with and distinguish themselves from this world of botany. Through temporal compression and the use of the cross-section, the miniatures relate to their printed counterparts. 217 However, where the printed illustrations to Fuchs, Mattioli, and Boccone are limited by the monochromatic and linear structure of their medium, Garzoni is able to utilize naturalism in both color and line. Additionally, most botanical illustration tended to show an edited, idealized version of the plant, where Garzoni’s depictions are often marked by ragged leaves or blemished surfaces. 97 Garzoni’s inclusion of a large snail in the foreground is typical of several of these works and speaks to a certain erudition and wit on her part (Figures 3.6, 3.15, 3.35). Snails were known to be hermaphrodites and were used as a metaphor for the creation of nature itself. Snails were a subject favored in witty or satirical discourse among natural philosophers and were often the topic of playful “jokes of nature.” These particularizing elements of naturalism tie her specimens to the earth or garden from which they came—ostensibly the Medici lands. In light of their display at the villa, these portraits of desirable, edible goods can be understood as alluding to the agricultural richness of the surrounding lands. 98 97 While a similar treatment of botanical specimens had occurred in the previous century (in the woodcuts of plants, including their deformities and blemishes, for Otto Brunfels’ Herbarium vivae icones (1530- 36), I believe that Garzoni’s realistic portrayal of the fruits and vegetables alludes to their freshness as edible produce. This sort of droll reference would certainly be appreciated by the cimenti-loving members of Ferdinand’s court. Snails were also commonly eaten by seventeenth- century Italians but required extensive preparations in order to ensure their edibility. 98 Paula Findlen, “Jokes and Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe,” Renaissance Quarterly 43, no. 2 (1990): 305-306. 218 According to Scappi, snails had to be purged of excrement, cleaned, removed from their shells, and parboiled before they could be fried or stewed. 99 The pomegranate of Open pomegranate in a dish, with grasshoppers, snail, and two cherries (Figure 3.6) is split to reveal its characteristic red seeds and comparing the image to Mattioli and Durante’s text and image elucidates some of the ways Garzoni and the viewers might have understood pomegranates as both food and medicine. A 1557 Italian version of Mattioli’s work featured “true portraits of the plants and animals” and provides visual comparisons for Garzoni’s paintings, particularly in light of her presumed knowledge of the text. 100 Mattioli’s entry for melagrano, or pomegranate, reveals the typical placement of a rectangular engraving embedded in the text (Figures 3.16 and 3.17). The image is placed in direct relation to the descriptive entry and therefore can be easily consulted by the reader. The text, which begins with the medicinal uses of the pomegranate (whose juices and seeds can help with ailments ranging from ulcers to ear pain to menstrual cycles, according to the text) begins with this medical information and moves to classificatory notes. The uses for the roots and the dried seeds are also mentioned: “The seeds can be dried in the sun and cooked with food or chopped and sprinkled over the top of foods to slow the fluctuations of the stomach and body...” 101 99 Bartolomeo Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570), trans. by Terence Scully (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 348-49. The engraving depicts a branch bearing not only three ripe fruits but also flowers and leaves. One of the bulbous fruits is split open to expose the 100 Mattioli, I discorsi. For a recent in-depth discussion of the Mattioli illustrations in various editions see Touwaide, “Botany and Humanism in the Renaissance: Background, Interaction, Contradictions,” 47-61. 101 Mattioli, I discorsi, 136. 219 seeds, which have been emphasized in the text and are the edible portion of the fruit. Durante describes the pomegranate (Figures 3.18 and 3.19) as having both good and bad effects on the body, depending on the fruit’s level of sweetness (for example, it is bad for fevers as it creates choler). 102 The woodcut of the pomegranate depicts a single, fruit-bearing branch springing out of a solid trunk, and, as is typical of many of Parasole’s illustrations for Durante, the plant is shown against a miniaturized backdrop of a village and rolling hills. The fruits are rotated in several directions, and one, like the Mattioli image, is split open to expose its seeds. 103 A comparison between an illustration of Paolo Boccone’s Icones and Garzoni’s Figs in a Chinese bowl, with cherries and a goldfinch indicates interesting visual and conceptual similarities (Figures 3.20 and 3.21). Both employ the cross-section to demonstrate the fruits’ internal properties. Boccone’s citrus is sliced crosswise and lettered in order to show its interior growth patterns, and Garzoni’s opened fig uses the same trope, revealing the edible flesh and small seeds of a ripe fig. Again, this corresponds to techniques of plant illustration but in a way that overtly emphasizes the edibility of the fruit. The Chinese bowl of figs shows the two varieties of the fruit ranging from unripe buds on a branch to ripe examples. An ornamentally arranged branch of a fig tree accompanies Mattioli’s entry for figs (Figures 3.22 and 3.23). In the In the printed images and Garzoni’s painting, a pomegranate is not merely presented for identification, but split open to display the edible portion of the fruit. 102 Durante, Herbario nuovo, 289. 103 Tongiorgi Tomasi also indicated that Parasole was given Mattioli as a model, and it is clear that she copied some of the woodcuts rather closely as in the case of this pomegranate. Tongiorgi Tomasi, “La femminil pazienza,” 163. 220 image, no attempt is made to indicate the trunk or roots of the tree but rather its distinctive leaves and growth of the fruits, whose many medical applications are described in the accompanying text. Dried and fresh figs are reported to have almost innumerable curative applications against a variety of ailments including ulcers, spasms, and nerve pains, among many others. Mattioli later notes that figs (and grapes) are “the honor and glory of all the fruits of autumn.” 104 He goes on to state that figs are “used in the foods of autumn [and] it is not necessary to state those which are superior: since it has been taught very well the taste of each one, that those that are well-matured and fat, and tasty are the most excellent.” 105 The small finch pecking at the opened fig, with its relatively lifeless pose, was likely drawn from a dead (perhaps stuffed) specimen. He assumes that the general reader would understand when figs are “most excellent,” showing an indication of widespread gastronomic-natural knowledge. Durante’s fig image shows a single branch with three ripe figs, emphasizing the unusual pattern of its leaves and distinctive profile of several drooping leaves (Figures 3.24 and 3.25) while the accompanying text contains similar information as the Mattioli. In comparison, Garzoni emphasizes the sensual, edible nature of the fruits while still including visual information for various life stages and elements of the fig tree. 106 104 As noted by Gillian Riley in The Oxford Companion to Italian Food, 201. I would also contend that Garzoni’s frequent inclusion of birds in her works alludes to texts such as Olina’s Uccelliera which discusses both the qualities and habitat of birds but primarily focuses 105 Mattioli, I discorsi, 161. 106 Casale, Gli incanti dell’iride, 74. 221 on their hunting and capture (Figure 3.26). Here, too, she manipulates interests in early ornithological classification that is still in the service of putting game birds on the table. Recalling the praises of Mattioli and Durante of figs as the “glory” of autumnal fruits, Garzoni’s inclusion of cherries (fruit that matures in the spring) makes plain that her works construct an idealized vision of edible abundance, one that allows the viewer to take pleasure in these fruits from all seasons in ways that were not actually possible. Despite the naturalistic rendering of the produce, these paintings are constructed fictions of gastronomic indulgence and imagination. Garzoni’s Melon with a slice of watermelon alludes to debates about the valor of melons as nutritive substance (Figure 3.27). The orange flesh and seeds of a specific variety of cantaloupe are displayed through a large, lengthwise cut (corresponding to Durante’s description of how Italians cut melons to eat them). Behind this melon yet framed by its leaves is a slice of watermelon whose glistening black seeds appear to have been enlarged for effect. 107 107 Silvia Meloni, “Giovanna Garzoni: Miniatora medicea,” 77-96 Teodoro Albmair’s 1600 discussion of pepone offers insight into its rich lore and controversies: he praises them as “very favorable, that is, in hot temperatures they provide us with the most refreshing, tasty food that one could ask for” but then goes on to discuss how an Emperor would eat twelve for a meal (surely a sign of disgusting excess, and an allusion to the legend that Pope Paul II died for eating too many). Albmair cites a Tuscan proverb, “Woman, and melon, blessed are those who enter,” and also includes a culinary preparation: “Stefani says that placing a little 222 of melon in a pot, you can cook the flesh more quickly.” 108 Melons are represented visually in Mattioli’s text as cocomeri, melloni and angurie (Figures 3.28, 3.29, 3.30, 3.31). Garzoni’s portrait of the cantaloupe and watermelon in light of early seventeenth-century Florentine discourses about their relative qualities undoubtedly alludes to these conversations and winkingly participates in them. 109 Thought by many physicians to be unhealthy, il cocomero domestico (domestic watermelon) is considered very useful to the stomach and body. Later, however, the text acknowledges that others have deemed it “viscous, frigid, difficult to digest and stays a long time in the stomach.” 110 The woodcuts (one of which has been repaired with a pen and ink drawing) show the curving vines emerging from spindly roots, bearing variously sized fruits along with flowers, and the illustrator emphasizes the ornamental beauty of the spiraling branches. Durante’s entry for melloni and pepone indiano warns of their ill effects quite emphatically, “[B]ut after eating melons, everyone should eat food of good nutrition, so that it can repair their damage,” and goes on to say that “the [sweet] melon is very damaging to cholerics, and the mature to the phlegmatics, and those that are sweet are the most difficult to digest...” (Figures 3.32 and 3.33). 111 108 Albmair, I quattro elementi, 92. He refers to Bartolomeo Stefani, presumably from his treatise L’arte di ben cucinare (Mantua, 1662). This inclusion of a contemporary culinary author further evinces my contention that print played a central role in the elevation of cooks as new authorities on foodstuffs. The woodcut for the “indian melon” corresponds directly to a note about cutting and serving it: “The indians do not 109 Mattioli explains that the term for melons (of varying types, what we know as cantaloupes, honeydew, watermelon, and cucumbers all use these terms) differs in each region of Italy. 110 Mattioli, I discorsi, 275. 111 Durante, Herbario nuovo, 358. 223 cut these melons lengthwise, like we do our melons when we want to eat them, but crosswise.” 112 Lionardo Giachini’s Lettera apologetica...in difesa, et lode del popone is part of an interesting genre of literature that emerged in the seventeenth century devoted to the controversial aspects of food. Another popular debate was the role of hot chocolate in terms of holy fast days: Francesco Felini’s Risposta dimostrativa che la cioccolata rompe il Digiuno... (Genova, 1676) argues that hot chocolate, while tasty, is also a food full of nutrition and has the ability to fill the stomach, and, thus, is not appropriate for fasting holy men. The melon’s distinctive striped flesh is depicted as well as an indication of the seeds inside, but it is shown devoid of its vine or leaves and therefore illustrated solely as a consumable good. 113 The melon was a most controversial item, believed to be dangerous and seductive and often warned against in dietary literature (as seen in the Mattioli and Durante texts). The cold juices of the melon were thought to counteract poorly with a hot stomach and not commonly recommended for ingestion. However, an interesting set of texts emerged at the turn of the century defending the consumption of melon. Giachini vehemently defended the healthful properties of melons in a Lettera apologetica...in difesa, et lode del popone (Florence, 1600) which brings alive the tenacity and importance of these debates. 114 112 Ibid. Written to a Messer Filippo Valori, the 113 Francesco Felini, Risposta dimostratativa che la cioccolata....(Genoa, 1676). On chocolate in general, a small book details its history and preparation: Antonio Colmenero, Della cioccolata (Rome: 1667). See also Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996). 114 Lionardo Giachini, Lettera apologetica...in difesa, et lode del popone (Florence: Filippo Giunti, 1600). 224 letter was a response to an argument that had begun two years earlier at a dinner table. Giachini outlined the problems others had articulated, passionately rebuts them, and ultimately declares the melon to be “falsely accused.” 115 our most illustrious excellence [the Grand Duke of Tuscany] if he deigns to accept this small sign of my great devotion, and if this year he misses tasting the superior goodness of that fruit, he may at least taste this new, important information. Another example further elaborates the healthful properties of melons: Massimo Aquilani’s Origine, qvalita e spezie de poponi e altro (1602) which is dedicated to: 116 This text brings together advice and information about melons, pumpkins and cucumbers from many sources, mostly classical ones. An unusual text by Giovan Francesco Angelita, I pomi d’oro (Ricanati, 1607) combines practical gastronomic and medical information about figs, melons, and snails with satire, legend, and witty commentary. The illustrated text pokes fun at works such as Aquilani’s and Giachini’s impassioned defense of melons. 117 The opened melon is also seen in another work mentioned in the Poggio Imperiale inventory, Il vecchio di Artimino, which combines a number of discrete elements from Garzoni’s other compositions on a single, rocky ground (Figure 3.34). It The texts provide insight into seventeenth-century beliefs about melons (as well as the fashion for discussing and defending them) and other foodstuffs and show that fruit or vegetables were laden with contested cultural and dietary meaning. 115 Giachini, Lettera apologetica, 17. 116 Massimo Aquilani, Origine, qvalita e spezie de poponi e altro (Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1602), dedication. 117 Gio. Francesco Angelita, I pomi d’oro (Ricanati: Antonio Braido, 1607) 225 is an anomaly of her oeuvre and perhaps an attempt to present a market scene as popularized by Northern painters. An elderly contadino holding two roosters is silhouetted against a blue sky and a contradictorily arid background. Giant citrus fruits, cardoons, cherries, artichokes, several living birds, a leg of prosciutto, salame, cheese, eggs, milk, and a flask of wine are presented in varying scales against the tilted foreground, with a hound peeking out from the right. An unusual work for the artist, this image could have been inspired by the still life work of Jacopo da Empoli or other Flemish artists working in Florence at the time. 118 Combining (somewhat awkwardly) Garzoni’s preferred genres of portrait and still life, the painting of these goods recalls the range of items described in herbals such as Mattioli’s (that included eggs and dairy products) and alludes not only to the bounty but also the variety and quality of products cultivated on Tuscan lands. 119 A copy of a detail from The old man of Artimino employs a similar cross-section to expose the flesh and seeds of a melon and was also sent to Ferdinand II (Figure 3.35). 120 For the Medici, foodstuffs were not only to be consumed and precious tableware presented at banquets, but they also served as a valuable currency in the aristocratic practices of gift-giving. Food, wine, animals, medicines, and herbs flowed both in and out of the court as gifts to curry favor or friendship or to indicate desire for political 118 Casale, Gli incanti dell’iride, 66-7. 119 Villa Artimino was Ferdinand I’s preferred villa, designed by Bernardo Buontalenti and completed in 1594. See Enrica Cassarino, La Villa Medicea di Artimino (Florence: Becocci, 1990). 120 Casale, Giovanna Garzoni, 83-4. 226 alliance. 121 [w]ith the greatest secrecy, the Grand Duke has sent nine mules from his stable to Germany, loaded with a variety of salted comestibles, like tongue, salami, hams, olives and all sorts of jams and marmalades [“confetture”], together with glasses, crystal vessels, and vessels and plates of porcelain. Fruits and vegetables from the warmer Tuscan climate were especially appreciated by their recipients, and might also be presented with china or crystal. For example, a gift sent by Ferdinand I to an Elector of Saxony was bestowed, 122 Foodstuffs such as those pictured in the herbals or in Garzoni’s works carried a significant value in this international gift exchange, and “Tuscan” items such as those presented in Il vecchio di Artimino carried special value. The fictions of abundance and bounty linked to a fertile Tuscan countryside were significant markers for Medici conceptions of power. Fruits and vegetables as objects of botanical study and “jokes about nature,” potent medicinal ingredients, features of the elite banquet table, and valuable currency for gift-giving are adroitly captured by Garzoni in these works. As a seasoned court artist, Garzoni undoubtedly would have been well-versed in manipulating both her own production and the courtly codes in order to continue her successful career. Her works appealed to the centrality of natural philosophy at Ferdinand II’s court and fulfilled the Medicean self-image of dominion over nature both through botanical knowledge and the consumption of ripe, beautiful fruits and vegetables at the table. In this set of miniatures, Garzoni presents a lavish buffet of consumables that corresponds to seventeenth-century courtly appetites. 121 Suzanne B. Butters, “The Uses and Abuses of Gifts in the World of Ferdinando de’Medici (1549- 1609),” I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 11 (2007): 257. 122 Butters, “The Uses and Abuses of Gifts in the World of Ferdinando de’Medici (1549-1609),” 278. 227 At the same time, her unique representation of the produce produced and shaped cultural and gastronomic tastes. 228 Figure 3.1: Giovanna Garzoni, Dog with Sweet Biscuits and a Cup, 1642-51 229 Figure 3.2: Back matter of Ricettario Fiorentino (Florence, 1623 and 1670) 230 Figure 3.3: Title page of Ricettario Fiorentino (Florence, 1670) 231 Figure 3.4: Jacopo Ligozzi, Anemones (Watercolor) Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi 232 Figure 3.5: Giovanna Garzoni, Ranunculus with Two Almonds and a European Carpenter Bee (Gouache on vellum) Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi 233 Figure 3.6: Giovanna Garzoni, Open pomegranate in a dish, with grasshoppers, snail, and two cherries (Gouache on parchment, 27 x 35 cm.) Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina 234 Figure 3.7: Engraving from Francesceo Stelluti, Persio tradotto in verso sciolto e dichiarato da Francesco Stelluti, Accademico Linceo da Fabriano (Rome, 1630) 235 Figure 3.8: Woodcut portraits of Henrich Fullmaurer (illustrator), Albert Meyer (illustrator), and Veit Rudolf Speckle (engraver), from Leonhard Fuchs, De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (Basel, 1542) 236 Figure 3.9: Woodcut from from Leonhard Fuchs, De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (Basel, 1542) 237 Figure 3.10: Woodcuts from Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) 238 Figure 3.11: Page from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice, 1636) 239 Figure 3.12: Detail of woodcuts from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice, 1636) 240 Figure 3.13: Giovanna Garzoni, Beans in a dish (Gouache on parchment, 24.5 x 34.5 cm) Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina 241 Figure 3.14: Giovanna Garzoni, Blue bowl with strawberries, pears and grasshopper eating wheat grains (Gouache on parchment, 25 x 35 cm.) Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina 242 Figure 3.15: Giovanna Garzoni, Pears, grapes and snail (Gouache on parchment, 24.5 x 32.5 cm.) Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina 243 Figure 3.16: Page from Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) 244 Figure 3.17: Detail of woodcut, Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) 245 Figure 3.18: Page from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice, 1636) 246 Figure 3.19: Detail of woodcut from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice, 1636) 247 Figure 3.20: Giovanna Garzoni, Figs in a Chinese bowl, with cherries and a goldfinch (Gouache on parchment, 26 x 38 cm.) Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina 248 Figure 3.21: Engraving from Paolo Boccone, Icones & descriptiones rariorum plantarum Siciliæ, Melitæ, Galliæ, & Italiæ (Oxford, 1674) 249 Figure 3.22: Page from Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) 250 Figure 3.23: Detail of woodcut, Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) 251 Figure 3.24: Page from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice, 1636) 252 Figure 3.25: Detail of woodcut from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice, 1636) 253 Figure 3.26: Engraving from Giovanni Pietro Olina, Uccelliera, overo, Discorso della natura e proprietà di diversi uccelli (Rome, 1622) 254 Figure 3.27: Giovanna Garzoni, Melon with a slice of watermelon (Gouache on parchment, 23 x 37.5 cm.) Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina 255 Figure 3.28: Page from Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) 256 Figure 3.29: Detail of woodcut, Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) 257 Figure 3.30: Page from Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) 258 Figure 3.31: Detail of woodcut, Pietro Andrea Mattioli, I discorsi ... ne i sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo: Con i veri ritratti della piante & de gli animali (Venice, 1557) 259 Figure 3.32: Page from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice, 1636) 260 Figure 3.33: Detail of woodcut from Castor Durante, Herbario nuovo (Venice, 1636) 261 Figure 3.34: Giovanna Garzoni, The old man of Artimino (Gouache on parchment, 38.2 x 60 cm.) Florence, Palazzo Pitti Galleria Palatina 262 Figure 3.35: Plate with melon, grapes, and a snail (Gouache on parchment, 35.5 x 49.5 cm.) Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina 263 Chapter 4 Collecting Culinary Culture in the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza A massive canvas (measuring approximately 1.8 x 1.2 meters) hanging in the Rocca Sanvitale of Fontanellato is a decidedly puzzling and complex image to the modern eye (Figure 4.1). 1 1 Boselli’s works do not have seventeenth-century titles; therefore I will use those from Ferdinando Arisi’s 1973 monograph on the artist. Ferdinando Arisi, Felice Boselli: Pittore di natura morta (Piacenza: Cassa di Risparmio di Piacenza, 1973). The focal point of the work is a large butchered pig with hoofed legs and feet still attached, perched on the lower level of a rocky ledge that is surrounded by a bird holding a stalk of wheat in its beak, a shining meat cleaver, and two living lambs whose eyes seem to mournfully assess two dead game birds. On the right of the glistening, bisected mass of ribs, flesh, and spongy intestines, a dead bird is splayed atop a knife and stalks of grain, with a cauliflower nestled next to it. A sieve improbably perches next to the pig’s leg and below the ledge, a cat saunters by a pot to inspect a bundle of wheat stalks and a living, yet perfectly still, turkey. The upper register of the painting displays a skinned cow’s head with the reflective orb of its eye blankly gazing toward the viewer, a basket with two curious ducks, and a copper pot that is surrounded by limp fowl (possibly ortolans and woodcocks) and two chickens balanced on the edge of the rocky step with lemons tucked between them. A reddish chunk of viscera, perhaps taken from the pork below, hangs from a hook alongside a hanging furry rabbit, its body extended above the turkey. In the background are trees 264 and a darkening peek of sky. This imagined scene of living and dead animals frozen in a beguiling tableau is representative of the work of seventeenth-century painter Felice Boselli (1650-1732). The impossibility and potential chaos of such a gathering is seen in the perfectly still but living lambs and turkey. The juxtapositions of plant and animal create an arresting image, along with the fleshy detail of the pig flesh poised next to the sharpened, shining tools that aid in the animal’s transformation to edible pork. Boselli tended to stuff his canvases as one might a market basket, cramming them with domesticated animals both living and dead, game birds, household pets, kitchen tools, fruits and vegetables, human figures, and occasionally bread, cheese or wine. But he never showcased a completed dish or meal; he highlighted instead the raw ingredients that would be put to work in the kitchen. His compositions are carefully balanced; here, the cow’s eye echoes across the canvas with a round colander and turkey’s flared tail, and the three red, pink, and white carcasses punctuate the canvas in a triangular formation. There is no market or kitchen context and the work would be hardly “appetizing” for many modern viewers. It is difficult for the modern viewer to imagine the pleasure derived from such images, particularly the tropes of butchered animals or heaps of dead fish and game. But Boselli’s work was quite popular in his time, and he enjoyed a lengthy and productive career, especially in the area around his native Piacenza where he worked for the Farnese, Sanvitale, Meli Lupi, and other aristocratic families of the area. 2 2 Boselli also worked for the Pallavicino family, and his works were found in eighteenth-century merchants’ art collections. 265 In this chapter, I propose a context for and close reading of Boselli’s paintings to understand his deployment of iconographies from the natural world and the kitchen. I will analyze the relationships between the courtly milieus in which he worked and the luxurious culinary manuscripts produced at these courts, and chart the content and collection of his still life paintings. These works have previously been studied in terms of stylistic development and with a focus on solidifying attributions for Boselli’s massive oeuvre. 3 These paintings invoke discourses of artistic and culinary production, providing ideal case studies to evaluate intersections between these spheres. Boselli created works of art in pendant sets or larger series that capitalized on the main concerns of their patrons—wealth, prestige, power, and health—by showcasing the animal and vegetable bounties specific to their lands. The popularity of the massive still life works in the duchy of Parma and Piacenza attests to the expressive powers of the heaping mounds of fish, meat, vegetables, and Boselli’s successful presentation of them. By exploring Boselli’s works in conjunction with print and manuscript sources from Emilia-Romagna, I will show how his paintings articulate the aspirations of the ducal family and other landowning aristocrats in the region. 4 Food producers, merchants, cooks, stewards, and butchers all contributed to the processes that converted the products of the earth into dishes for the table. Boselli’s 3 Ferdinando Arisi, Felice Boselli and Arisi, Natura morta tra Milano e Parma in età barocca: Felice Boselli, rettifiche e aggiunte (Piacenza: Tip.Le.Co., 1995). 4 Donatella Biagi Maino observes that these collections were attempts to mask declining power. He notes that the patrons of these works were “the nobles and wealthy bourgeois, committed, following the example of the Farnese, to hide their scarce political power and growing poverty with increasingly lavish manifestations, to fake a prestige that was for the most part nonexistent.” Maino, “La natura morta nell'Emilia Occidentale” in La natura morta in Italia, ed. Carlo Pirovano (Milan: Electa, 1989), 385. 266 canvases employ an iconography of culinary culture that alludes to all aspects of this transformation beginning with agricultural cultivation, breeding and raising domestic animals, hunting, and fishing. His works invoke the mechanics of processing and selling foodstuffs along with the valuable tools and equipment needed for butchering and cooking. Paintings depicting the ingredients and tools needed to produce lavish meals would have brought to mind the culinary professionals working at these courts— a group of individuals whose increasingly specialized skills were in high demand. The ubiquity of Boselli’s works in aristocratic households and villas demonstrates the central role of culinary culture for shoring up the prestige of weakening landowning families. Foodstuffs—from glistening fruits to piles of pale, plucked game—are displayed in profuse abundance and variety, and identifying them will shed light on how early modern viewers might have understood the paintings in relation to their own ideals of taste and understanding of food production. 5 5 Daniele Benati and Lucia Peruzzi, eds., La natura morta in Emilia e in Romagna (Milan: Skira, 2000), 33. Benati and Peruzzi further characterize the works as celebrations of the ritual and nutritive value of food and as “archetypal” representations of typical pantry ingredients (bread, wine, fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, and cheese). I differ in my approach to the works and instead explore the subject matter not as typical elements of a daily meal but detailed taxonomies of both common and rare foodstuffs only available to aristocratic households. For these patrons, Boselli’s arrangements of produce represented a specifically Parmense celebration of the products from their lands. They not only declared the power of titled landowning families, but also emphasized their patrons’ imagined supremacy over the skilled domestic officials working in their service and dominion over nature itself. By capturing meats and vegetables both in and out of season, the works inherently make reference to the new 267 technologies of food preservation that allowed wealthy households to enjoy such items year-round. 6 The collection of these works provided aristocratic landowners a means to possess and display the edible munificence of their land, as well as a sense of control that evaded actual problems with food supply and presented an idealized taxonomy of luxurious, fashionable victuals. To begin, I will discuss Boselli’s artistic trajectory and still life collecting in the region before examining links between his paintings’ iconography and local culinary culture. I will conclude the chapter by examining the collection and display of Boselli’s series of works in the Sanvitale and Meli Lupi residences at Fontanellato and Soragna. The region of Parma and Piacenza was dominated by French and papal rule at the turn of the sixteenth century, but in 1545, Pope Paul II gifted the duchy to his son, Pier Luigi Farnese. Patronage of Still Lifes in Parma and Piacenza 7 6 Benati and Peruzzi, La natura morta in Emilia e in Romagna, 34. They also note that painters could only study the items from life when they were available in season, and so they had to develop a repertoire of subjects that could be repeated in various compositions. Parma was chosen as the capital, and urban renovation began in 1560. In the late sixteenth century, under Duke Ottavio, construction began on the Palazzo della Pilotta, an ambitious ducal residence meant to symbolize the newly 7 For histories of the region of Parma and Piacenza (now part of Emilia Romagna) see: Umberto Benassi, Storia della città di Parma, vols 1-3 (Bologna: Forni, 1971),; Giovanni Drei and Giuseppina Allegri Tassoni, I Farnese: Grandezza e decadenza di una dinastia italiana. (Roma: Libreria dello Stato, 1954). On the history of the duchy, see: A. Biondi, “I ducati dell’Emilia occidentale nel periodo dell’antico regime,” in Storia dell’Emilia Romagna, vol. 2, ed. Aldo Berselli (Bologna: University Press, 1977), 35- 64. 268 established duchy’s grandeur and legitimacy. 8 The duchy however was unable to complete the structure, reflecting its tenuous hold on the financial resources needed to complete such an undertaking. Political unrest also hampered this region, particularly at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when warring noble families’ challenges to the Farnese were temporarily squashed with the public execution of seven aristocrats. This was later seen as a convenient method for the duke to confiscate their property and lands, such as the Sanseverino family’s Colorno estate. 9 This event is representative of the duchy’s struggles with the feudal landowning powers in its territories and shows the economic and political power of these clans. 10 Ranuccio I Farnese (1569-1622) was the fourth duke of Parma and his successor was Odoardo (1612-46). However, the dukes reigning Parma and Piacenza during Felice Boselli’s lifetime were Ranuccio II (1630-94) and Francesco Farnese (1678- 1727). Throughout the seventeenth century, the lands owned by the Farnese, Sanvitale, Meli Lupi, Landi, and Pallavicino enjoyed economic successes largely through the agriculture and dairy production. 11 8 Lucia Fornari Schianchi, ed., Il Palazzo della Pilotta a Parma: Dai servizi della corte alle moderne istituzioni culturali (Parma: Cassa di risparmio di Parma & Piacenza, 1996). Under Ranuccio II, the duchy coped reasonably well, though it suffered from 9 As the Farnese gradually took control of lands previously owned by other aristocratic families (such as the Landi family’s parcels in 1682), the duchy grew in power through this territorial acquisition. 10 Timothy McCall argues that the “second-tier” rulers and clans of fifteenth-century Parma and Piacenza deserve their own study, outside a model that focuses entirely on the culture of major courts. Timothy McCall, Networks of Power: The Art Patronage of Pier Maria Rossi of Parma (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2005). 11 Incidentally, historians note that Farnese dukes, especially Odoardo, Ranuccio II and Francesco, were plagued by health problems stemming from obesity. Andrea Zanlari, A tavola con i Farnese: Dai ricettari rinascimentali ai prodotti tipici di Parma (Parma: PPS Editrice, 1996), 69. 269 significant financial and political decline, particularly as papal forces threatened and eventually captured the territory of Castro within the ducal territory. Ranuccio II’s son, Francesco, became duke in 1694. Aside from their primary residences in Parma—the Pilotta, Palazzo del Giardino, and extensive ducal gardens—the Farnese had palaces and villas in Piacenza, Rome, Caprarola, and Colorno. 12 The Farnese art collections and decorative programs were fairly typical of seventeenth-century courts as they were largely composed of mythological and religious subjects legitimizing and promoting the family. 13 Ranuccio II was a patron of the opera and theatrical arts. Under his reign, several theaters were constructed in Parma and he presented a lavish wedding festival for his son Odoardo in 1690. Giuseppe Notari composed a written record of the 1690 nuptials of Odoardo and Dorotea Sofia to be circulated to other Italian and European courts. The description enumerates the processions, ceremonies, dances, theatrical productions, and banquets that marked the celebration. Culinary culture is embedded throughout the narrative. 14 12 Ranuccio II renovated the villa at Colorno with Ferdinando Bibbiena. For example, the procession of individuals accompanying Dorotea Sofia included two guardaroba officials, three servants for the pages, a fire- 13 Helge Gamrath, Farnese: Pomp, Power, and Politics in Renaissance Italy (Rome: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 2007), 185. See also Lucia Fornari Schianchi, ed., I Farnese: Arte e collezionismo, exh. cat. (Milan: Electa, 1995). 14 Giuseppe Notari, Descritione delle feste fatte eseguire con reale magnificenza nella città di Parma, il mese di maggio 1690: Dal serenissimo signor dvca Ranvccio II per le nozze del serenissimo principe Odoardo Farnese svo primogenito, con la serenissima principessa Dorotea Sofia, palatina di Neobvrgo (Parma: Galeazzo Rosati, 1690). See also Lotto Lotti, L'idea di tutte le perfezioni, introduzione al balletto de' serenissimi principi Francesco, e Antonio Farnesi, fatto rappresentare dal sereniss. sig. dvca di Parma nel svo nvovo teatrino, in occasione de' felicissimi sponsali del serenissimo sig. principe Odoardo svo primogenito, con la serenissima signora principessa Dorotea Sofia di Neobvrgo (Piacenza, 1690). 270 tender, six servants for the ladies, a servant for the princess’s chaperone, two waiters and eight servants for the livery. Credenzieri, wine stewards, cooks, and their attendants for the princess’s retinue followed these personal servants. By listing these individuals, the author affirms their importance and the centrality of their duties to the rhythms of everyday life. Notari describes the meal that was consumed upon the retinue’s arrival in Parma as “a sumptuous dinner...a considerable meal, not only for the quantity, but also for the rarity of foods.” 15 The Farnese, like the Medici, had demonstrated a particular interest in collecting still life painting. In the late sixteenth century, the Farnese acquired six pendant market scenes created by Joachim Beukelaer and housed them in a room christened the ottava camera dei paesi (octagonal room of the countryside) in Parma’s Palazzo del Giardino. The placement of these works in the ducal palace situated amongst the vast gardens (rather than the urban Pilotta) is an early example of the display of series of still life His emphasis on both the quantity and rarity of foods is one that is echoed by Boselli’s bursting compositions. The Farnese, along with the feudal aristocratic courts of the Sanvitale and Meli Lupi, relied on culinary culture to bolster their public image and reaffirm their status. Italian still life painters such as Boselli therefore created series of paintings that both allude to and help shape this key structuring element of court life. The dukes of the smaller duchy of Parma and Piacenza did not pursue the same interests in natural philosophy as the seventeenth-century Medici had. Rather, the dukes’ interests more generally aligned with the patronage of theater and opera. 15 Notari, Descritione, 31. 271 paintings in rural or pastoral residences. Beukelaer (1533-74), a painter from Antwerp, specialized in large-scale market scenes. 16 His paintings blended genres by displaying comical, lower class subjects alongside ambitious still lifes poised in market stalls. Edibles fill the foregrounds, as in Fish Market (1569) where a fish stall with tilted wooden tables and vessels displays a wide variety of fillets and whole fish (Figure 4.2). A fishmonger offers a specimen to the viewer while his wife (and a younger man) unloads a basket of smaller fish. The background is crowded with figures buying and selling goods at the market. The other five paintings in this series show meat, game, vegetables, and exotic goods arranged for maximum display on market tables. 17 The sixteenth-century Farnese collection of these Northern paintings marked the beginning of widespread popularity of the genre in the region. Pieter Aertsen’s works also enjoyed success in Italy, and Italian painters, who had seen these Flemish paintings in ducal collections, began mimicking their styles. Bartolomeo Passerotti and Vincenzo Campi are notable examples of sixteenth-century Italian artists influenced by the Northern market scenes. 18 16 André Gilbert, Joachim Beuckelaer, 1533-1575: Dernières oeuvres (n.p.: n.p., 1994); Keith P.F. Moxey, Pieter Aertsen, Joachim Beuckelaer, and the Rise of Secular Painting in the Context of the Reformation (New York: Garland, 1977); Joachim Beuckelaer: het markt- en keukenstuk in de Nederlanden, 1550-1650 (Gent: Gementekrediet, 1986). Art historians have posited that Boselli surely had seen and 17 Bert Meijer, Parma e Bruxelles: Committenza e collezionismo farnesiani alle due corti (n.p.: Silvana, 1988). The series may have been purchased by Margherita Farnese and is now housed in Naples, in the Museo di Capodimonte. 18 Vincenzo Campi in Cremona and Annibale Carracci in Bologna also painted images of food vendors in Northern Italy toward the end of the sixteenth century, and this group of works is typically cited as the beginning of genre painting in Italy. This genre was later taken up by Caravaggio and his followers, as well as by the Bamboccianti in Rome. The Bamboccianti, followers of Pieter van Laer, achieved great success with their scenes of everyday life. On the Campi and Passerotti, see Mina Gregori, I Campi e la cultura artistica cremonese del Cinquecento, exh. cat. (Milan: Electa, 1985); Paliaga, Franco, Vincenzo Campi: Scene del quotidiano (Milan: Skira, 2000); Angela Ghirardi, Bartolomeo Passerotti: Pittore, 272 copied these famous Beukelaer works in the Farnese gallery and have pinpointed them as influential for the style and iconography of his later, large scale still lifes. 19 The Farnese’s relatively early interest in the Beukelaer works and the still life genre would be continued by later patrons in the family who collected still lifes by Flemish and Italian artists including local producers Boselli, Bartolomeo Arbotori, and Cristofori Munari, among others. 20 Ultimately, Felice Boselli and Bartolomeo Arbortori largely dominated still life painting in seventeenth-century Parma and Piacenza. 21 1529-1592, trans. Isabella Vichi (Rimini: Luisè, 1990); Sheila McTighe, "Foods and the Body in Italian Genre Paintings, About 1580: Campi, Passarotti, Carracci," Art Bulletin 86, no. 2 (2004): 301-23. McTighe has deftly analyzed a group of genre paintings (Campi, Passerrotti, Carracci) with consideration of contemporary beliefs about food and social class. I follow her lead in interpreting still life painting through the lens of culinary and dietary knowledge. Her thesis concludes that the scenes of foodstuffs displayed and juxtaposed with peasant bodies speak to late sixteenth-century discourses of the appropriate foods for lower and higher classes to eat. Arbortori (1594-1676), created works with echoes of the Flemish painting preferred by the Farnese (Beucklaer and Aertsen), and included fruits, vegetables, meats and fish, and luxurious tableware in his 19 Alberto Crispo, “Il ducato farnesiano: Aspetti della natura morta a Parma e Piacenza,” in La natura morta in Emilia e in Romagna, ed. Daniele Benati and Lucia Peruzzi (Milan: Skira, 2000), 150-151. Crispo indicates that a copy of Beuckelaer’s butcher shop has been located and attributed to Boselli. 20 Other still life painters active in the area included Frans Denys, Francesco Maria Reti, Domenico Bettini, and Giovanni Crivelli. Pier Francesco Cittadini (1613/16-1681) was a painter who did not specialize in still lifes, but did complete a number of them, gaining success primarily in Bologna. In Modena and Ferrara, Agostino Stringa (1640-post 1709), the unknown Pittore di Rodolfo Lodi (second half of the seventeenth century), and Domenico Bettini (1644-1705) all painted contents of the kitchen, recording the perishable goods for posterity. On still life painting in Emilia-Romagna, see Daniele Benati, “Pittura ‘di ferma’ in Emilia e in Romagna,” in Fasto e rigore: La natura morta nell’Italia settentrionale dal XVI al XVII secolo, ed. Giovanna Godi (Milan: Skira, 2000), 53-63 and “Appunti sulla natura morta in Emilia e nelle Romagne,” in Rodolfo Battistini, Cleri Bonita, Claudio Giardini et al., L’Anima e le cose: La natura morta nell’Italia pontifica nel XVII e XVIII secolo (Modena: Artioli, 2001). Antonella Casassa and Marco Rossi perform an analysis of still life collecting in “Per una statistica delle presenze di natura morta in inventari italiani, 1624-1817,” in La Natura morta in Italia, vol. 1, ed. Francesco Porzio (Milan: Electa, 1989). 21 For a literature review of the subject, see Benati and Peruzzi, La natura morta in Emilia e in Romagna 9-13. Benati and Peruzzi characterize Arbotori and Boselli’s works as “aristocratic” rather than “rustic,” based on Flemish and bodegone traditions. 273 compositions. 22 He achieved a moderate level of affluence and prestige as his works were widely purchased in Parma and Piacenza, and they were already being copied in 1692. 23 Boselli was clearly influenced by Arbotori, and their compositions share many formal elements. Boselli worked on a large scale, a practice that set him apart from many of his Italian and Flemish counterparts who tended to depict smaller still life scenes. This also differentiates his production from Garzoni’s miniatures that fused painting with objects of luxury. Boselli, by virtue of his gender, was permitted to work on the large scale of religious or history paintings, and his works decorated palaces, castles, and other aristocratic residences whose large rooms demanded sizable canvases. However, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian art on this scale tended to depict the religious or mythological subjects of history painting, and, thus, the popularity of Boselli’s massive works is inconsistent with the norms of still life painting. However, this particular moment, as Marco Chiarini has noted, saw a boom in the collecting and privileging of the entire genre of still life painting, an elevation that briefly placed it on par with history painting for the Medici and Farnese. 24 Boselli may have adopted the large scale of history painting in order to distinguish himself in the genre of still life and conform to the decorative needs of his patrons. 25 22 Lanfranco Ravelli, Bartolomeo Arbotoni: Piacenza 1594-1676 (Bergamo: Grafica & arte, 2000); Ravelli, Bartolomeo Arbotoni piacentino, maestro di Evaristo Baschenis: Ipotesi sulla formazione del pittore bergamasco (Bergamo, 1986). 23 Maino, “La natura morta nell'Emilia Occidentale,” 385. 24 Marco Chiarini, La natura morta a palazzo e in villa: Le Collezioni dei Medici e dei Lorena (Livorno: Sillabe, 1998). 25 Bartolomeo Bimbi in Florence and artists in Naples also worked in this large format. 274 Boselli trained in the workshop of Giuseppe and Michelangelo Nuvolone in Milan and possibly worked for a short time in Arbotori’s workshop. 26 Around 1668-69, Boselli departed Milan for Piacenza, his birthplace, then moved to Parma in 1671 and married Barbara Draghi. Her brother, Carlo Virginio Draghi, was a successful architect in the area and the newly appointed head of a Farnese theater project (begun in 1673). He first commissioned Boselli to paint sets for the Farnese stage, which paved his way to become a court artist for the Farnese. 27 However, it is not clear exactly which of Boselli’s works resided in the Farnese collections, as their inventories tend not to give the names of artists. Rather, there are many citations and generalized descriptions of paintings of game, fish, and “items of lean and fat days” that have been proposed as Boselli’s works. 28 26 Arisi, Natura morta tra Milano e Parma in età barocca, 39. Draghi seems to have facilitated many of Boselli’s other commissions, including those for the Sanvitale and Meli Lupi. Boselli worked in many aspects of interior decoration, providing temporary works for theater productions, portraits, ornamental fresco paintings, and copies of sixteenth-century works. It is unclear exactly when Boselli shifted to specialize in still lifes, but he first signed and dated a painting of game ducks and birds in 1680. Boselli, through the reference of his brother-in-law Draghi, worked for the Sanvitale from 1681-1700. The artist’s patron, count Alessandro (1646-1727), first commissioned Boselli for the decoration of a theater (destroyed in 1875), and then for the decoration of other rooms at Fontanallato, 27 Ibid., 40. 28 Crispo, “Il ducato farnesiano,” 144. 275 including pastoral frescoes in the sala di ricevimento in 1687. 29 Boselli also worked for the Meli Lupi towards the end of the century, first creating six large oval paintings for their castle in Soragna, for which the artist was paid 1500 lire on November 2, 1699. 30 The Meli Lupi, apparently pleased with the first set, again commissioned Boselli to paint six more oval works in 1708 (at the same price). Besides the patronage of the Sanvitale, Meli Lupi, and Farnese, Boselli’s work was also prized by the Medici in Tuscany. Ferdinando de’Medici commissioned Boselli’s self portrait and several canvases of wild game in 1712. 31 Boselli also worked for churches and monasteries as well as the local aristocracy. He was a successful and prosperous painter, supported his daughter’s convent, and owned a home in Parma as well as a parcel of land not far from Fontanellato. His son, Orazio, a painter who worked in Boselli’s workshop, died in 1721, and it is likely that Giovanni Crivelli (il Crivellino) also came to work with him as a collaborator. He died at the age of eighty-two on August 2, 1732, and is buried in Parma. He was humorously nicknamed “the Michelangelo of birds,” but the nineteenth- century remodeling of palaces and villas, and later criticism of his style and devaluation 29 Arisi, Natura morta tra Milano e Parma in età barocca, 42. 30 Ibid. 31 Marco Chiarini, “I quadri della collezione del Gran Principe Ferdinando di Toscana,” Paragone 26 (1975): 96n303. 276 of still life painting in general, allowed for the destruction and dissipation of many of his works. 32 Boselli painted two self-portraits, one for the Medici in Florence, in which he turns towards the viewer, paintbrush in hand, in front of a painting in progress. Documents accompanying the acquisition of the work characterize the self-portrait as “the painter for the duke of Parma.” 33 32 Maino, “La natura morta nell'Emilia Occidentale,” 387-88. Maino discusses the fact that with Boselli’s numerous commissions, he surely employed assistants including his son Orazio that “diluted” the quality of his work. Besides the increased presence of Boselli’s workshop painters’ hands, his later works are often characterized by their rapid and nervous brush strokes, which are increasingly disjointed. Perhaps due to this less illusionistic style, his followers did not enjoy the same success. Crivellone and Crivellino went to Milan, and as the Parma duchy was taken over by the Bourbon dynasty, still life paintings fell from favor. The Medici portrait shows a younger man gazing placidly at the viewer (Figure 4.3). Boselli’s canvas in progress is small-scale, with a large hare dangling to dominate the composition. His hand is lifted in a gesture of raising or lowering the paintbrush. A presumably later self-portrait offers a similar composition, but Boselli presents himself as an older man, this time in front of a painting of two hanging chickens, clutching a pigment-laden palette and several paintbrushes in addition to the one he is using (Figure 4.4). These portraits’ similar compositions emphasize Boselli’s mastery of his most frequently used subject matter— dead animals awaiting their transition into meats for the table. In these works, Boselli fashioned himself as an artistic master of the specific elements that made up his larger still lifes. In the Parma self-portrait, a cat is perched over his right shoulder, paw resting on Boselli’s jacket, and the steadiness of the artist’s gaze is matched by the cat’s wide open eyes. Boselli often included cats in his works as a type of signature, a play 33 Crispo, “Il ducato farnesiano,” 144. 277 on his first name of Felice and its Latin root “felino.” This cat in this painting, lurking improbably behind the artist and echoing his gaze and gesture, supports this assertion that Boselli alluded to his own authorial presence through the numerous cats in his compositions. Interestingly, the cats in Boselli’s compositions are well-behaved; they slink amongst the piles of edibles and seemingly sniff or explore the goods, but never rip, gnaw, or destroy any of tempting foods. If the cat is a symbolic signature for the artist, these creatures are curious but remain decorous. Boselli’s oeuvre is immense; however, his canvases tended to repeat such tropes as meats, game and fish in various stages of butchery, fruits and vegetables, bread and cheese, kitchen tools, along with living animals such as cats or owls. Selected works will demonstrate ways in which his subject matter engages with the culinary culture of elite households in Parma and Piacenza. These residences required huge amounts of raw foodstuffs to meet both the daily physical needs of their bocche and need for exotic, expensive, and specialized goods on special occasions. As a result, foodstuffs represented valuable economic and cultural capital for the upper-class viewer. Landowning aristocrats depended on the income from the farming and cultivation of their territories while their attending courtiers were compensated with food. Social prestige depended largely on culinary culture, whether through domestic rations, lavish banqueting, or the gifting and serving of famed regional specialties. Agriculture and Food Production 278 Angolo di dispensa con pollame e verdure (1680-90) depicts a rock ledge cluttered with lettuces, birds, and kitchen tools (Figure 4.5). 34 The combinations of lettuces, mushrooms, cherries, cucumbers and onions make for formally balanced compositions, with their rounded shapes echoing each other. However, they must not be dismissed as merely attractive and visually pleasing items as each individual food possessed distinctive medicinal applications that would have influenced viewers’ perceptions of the work. Boselli’s representations of the edible goods signaled the nourishment of their freshness and nutritious properties, but his painitngs also evoked the wealth of the patron’s lands, which was reliant on The center of the composition is formed by copper pots filled with heads of lettuce and a small game bird. A petite earthenware vessel, curling heads of lettuce, lemon, garlic, and more varieties of fowl in differing stages of being plucked surround the pot. A wooden cutting board dominates the right half of the work, with a sliced wedge of cheese, two knives, and a clove of garlic. A Bosellian cat sniffs and paws delicately at the wedge. A pendant work echoes the jumbled yet orderly composition of Angolo di dispensa con pollame e verdure but with mushrooms, cucumbers, cherries and green onions occupying the lower register alongside a majolica pitcher and cup decorated with arabesque designs (Figure 4.6). On the upper plane of the canvas, a torn loaf of bread with a knife precariously balanced in its soft innards perches alongside a wheel of cheese, with a generously cut wedge and shiny cherry placed atop the wheel. 34 Figures 4.5 and 4.6 are pendant works. They both measure 82 x 100 cm. and are now housed in private collection in Brescia. Arisi, Natura morta tra Milano e Parma. 279 agriculture. 35 The region of Parma and Piacenza was plagued with famine, food shortages, and plagues periodically throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Therefore, the idealizing visual presentation of abundance evoked successful and profitable agricultural and hunting harvests. The goods depicted can be understood as fantasies of this concrete income for the ducal or aristocratic family. The Farnese and other landowners kept careful records and inventories of the production of their lands, including the tenants who farmed them and raised herds of animals that grazed on them. These tenants were strictly regulated by the ducal accountant, or computista and the tenants kept detailed records of daily harvests that were then monitored and compiled by the computista. 36 For example, a seventeenth-century document in the Farnese archives contains regulations for land holdings in the duchy. 37 35 On the demographics and economics of Parma in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries see Marzio Achille Romani, Nella spirale di una crisi: Popolazione, mercato e prezzi a Parma tra cinque e seicento (Milan: Dott. A. Giuffrè Editore, 1975). It lists a variety of instructions and rules regarding country possessions and homes under the rule of the duke. An overriding concern seems to be that the court receives the proper wines, grains, and fruits of these estates. Some sections list specific possessions of these estates such as the well, portico, oven, pigpen, indicating the value of such characteristics. The document instructs: 36 ASP, CFPP, busta 235-236. This document is an example of expenditures and records for farms and other lands. There are lists and receipts of expenses for specific farms and animals as well as records of the production, mostly of farms around Fontevivo. 37 ASP, CCF, serie VII, busta 51, fasc. 24, “Ordini e istruzioni su terreni nel contado, di proprietà ducale” (1604-1680). 280 When it is time for various harvests you should be very vigilant that you do not waste time that that you make sure with every precaution that each item is counted and well-stored. You should separately note in a book all of the items that you have gathered. 38 These documents show that the estates and villas were very tightly controlled, especially as the actual wealth and power of the duchy were fading. Extensive documentation was required for the harvests: “You will store the grains, wines, and other fruits of the harvest very diligently [...] and immediately after the harvest you will make your lists and give them to the...general master in Parma and the other to the accountant.” 39 Boselli, in the case of the Brescia pendant works, depicts a small-scale version of these fruit and vegetable yields, but the early modern viewers of the paintings would have connected the produce to the land from which it came. Amateur gardening arose as aristocratic hobby in the seventeenth century (alongside long-established hunting, fishing and falconry), which would increase the viewers’ interest in and knowledge of ideal specimens of fruits and vegetables. 40 38 ASP, CCF, serie VII, busta 51, fasc. 24. “Quando sara il tempo di fare li raccolti di quale si voglia cosa sarete vigilante che non si perde tempo et che si faij con ogni delig.a accio ogni cosa si ripongha bene custodie. Doverete nottare nel uno libro destintamente tutte le robbe che vi racogliamranno.” In these series of paintings, the actual problems inherent in agricultural production and food gathering were eliminated, and the bounties of the earth could be enjoyed year-round without regard for weather, pests, theft, or inferior quality. 39 Ibid. “Farete riporre li grani vini et altri frutti racolti quali custodirete diligentamente et se non haverete luochi da potere governare detti grani o vino o altro ne darete memoriale in cam.ra che possa dar ordine di quello che se ne havera da fare subbito fatti li raccolti de grani doverete fare tue liste simile sommariam.te de quale unane doverete dare in Cam.ra uan doverete mad.e a Parma al si.r Mes.ro Gnale et l’atlra doverete dare in computerista.” 40 Albala, The Banquet, 74. 281 Wedges of cheese are prominent in many of his (and Bartolomeo Arbotori’s) paintings (see Figures 4.5, 4.6, 4.9). Boselli typically posed the hunks of cheese with a knife nearby, presenting this valuable commodity for the viewer’s consumption. The powerful Lardaroli guild took the alpine cheesemaker San Lucio as their protector, and commissioned an image of the saint to mark their official documentation. A seventeenth century print of this image (Figure 4.7) shows the patron saint of the Lardaroli, San Lucio, presenting a generous wedge of cheese to a hungry beggar. In the seventeenth century, the Lardaroli and Beccai alike wielded significant wealth and power. The creation of a wide market for the regional specialty cheese produced by master cheesemakers paralleled the newly elevated status of cooks, stewards and other culinary professionals at this time. In Figures 4.5 and 4.6, crumbly pieces of cheese are painted in diffuse, glowing tones of pale yellow and beige alongside the vegetables and fowl. The presence of cheese in works is relatively common in still life painting, but for Boselli and his audiences linked to the lands of Parma and Piacenza, it would have evoked the prized parmigiano reggiano, exclusively produced in the region. The land around Parma was an agrarian center with ancient roots in farming, meat and dairy production, and parmesan cheese had attained enough fame by the fifteenth century to warrant mention by Boccaccio, who described mountains of grated parmesan in his mythical description of a Cockaigne-esque land. Parmesan was identified as a superior cheese by 282 Bartolomeo Scappi and enjoyed a reputation far beyond the region. 41 It was a valuable and celebrated item for the culture of courtly gift-giving, sent to impress its recipients by the Farnese dukes but also by religious institutions and aristocrats from other regions. In 1616, an elder of the Lardaroli guild presented a written act delineating the standards of parmesan cheese production, officially marking the tight controls over the ingredients and processing of “official” parmigiano reggiano. 42 41 Bartolomeo Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi: L’arte et prudenza d’un maestro Cuoco, trans. Terence Scully (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 145n223. The Lardaroli possessed the rights to produce and sell cheeses, butter, oils, fresh fish, pork meat and its various products (salami, prosciutto, hams, and offal). This guild had split from the powerful butchers’ guild (the Beccai) by the fifteenth century, and the two professional guilds pursued very different modes of selling their products. The Beccai, who sold primarily beef and more expensive meats, remained regulated by the ducal state, were allowed to only sell their goods in determined location (the public butcher shops), and the prices of their goods were strictly controlled. The Lardaroli, while remaining under ducal control in terms of the goods they sold, were not confined to a specific location for the sale of their pork products. Therefore, they operated nomadically, or outside the regulated public areas of the Beccai, allowing the Lardaroli producers more freedom with their pricing and sales. As Claudio Bargelli has argued, this allowed for two separate economic markets to develop around the two guilds. The Lardaroli developed 42 Claudio Bargelli, “Alle origini di una vocazione alimentare: beccai e lardaroli nel mercato delle carni a Parma in età moderna,” Economia Agro-Alimentare (2002): 199. Bargelli likens these restrictions on quality to the present-day Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC), an appellation that guarantees that a specific wine or food product meets predetermined standards for quality and production methods. See Marzio dall’Acqua, “Nasce nel 1616 (sic) il controllo di origine per il Parmigiano, Gazetta di Parma (October 10, 1977): 3. For the history of parmigiano reggiano, see Mario Iotti, Storia del formaggio di grana "parmigiano-reggiano," 1200-1990 (Modena: Aedes Muratoriana, 1991). 283 through tightly knit family-run operations, strictly tied to the land. Their less regulated market allowed for competition, specialization, and the creation of a dedicated market for their highly-sought after products. 43 In this way, unlike the Beccai, the Lardaroli created a niche for their specialized goods (one that still survives today). 44 Early modern food producers and consumers were deeply invested in the production of the lands and animals specifically from Parma that allowed for their economic success, as this study in guild competition and the differing models of agrarian production shows. The thick wedges of cheese in Boselli’s paintings represent far more than a tasty condiment but rather a pre-industrial model of food production that was intrinsically linked to the specific fields, weather patterns, and vegetation of Emilia Romagna. The collection of Boselli’s works by the elite landowners of the region celebrates the craft of powerful guilds like the Lardaroli and Beccai, but ultimately flatters the landowning patron. The display of these fruits, vegetables, and cheeses connects the owner of the residence to his plentiful lands. Boselli’s compositions almost always include kitchen utensils or fine tableware alongside the edible subjects. By including these precious objects, he created images that functioned as permanent displays of the family’s material wealth. Natura morta con verdura e selvaggina celebrates celery, cherries, lemons, apples, pomegranates, Visual Inventories 43 Bargelli, “Alle origini di una vocazione alimentare,” 207. 44 For new research on modern Emilian food production, see Lorena Bianconi, La cucina contadina: storia dell'alimentazione, patrimonio e tradizioni nei musei dell'Emilia-Romagna (Bologna: Compositori, 2009). 284 artichokes, and a duck (Figure 4.8). 45 Boselli employs the objects in scenes that either contradict the actual uses of the utensils or allude to their eventual use for a dish. For example, in Figure 4.1, the ladles, colanders and sieves are propped amongst a huge variety of foodstuffs, posed as Additionally, a light source emanating from the right side of the scene highlights the gleaming fluted edges of a copper bacile, or basin. The curves and rounded shapes of the fruits are echoed in the mermaid handle of the basin, which is filled with more fruits and vegetables along with two china plates. One is turned to the side, as if to show off the thin delicacy of its profile. Fine tableware and kitchen utensils were valuable assets for aristocratic households and the circulation of such items was often tied to the maintenance of social order. These are not humble objects to be relegated to the kitchen, but valuable goods that were carefully tracked as they moved from person to person through court households. Boselli’s paintings often mixed alimentary goods with the vessels intended to cook or serve them, an interesting parallel with the engravings of pots and pans in Scappi’s treatise. Both sets of images display kitchen equipment for an aristocratic reader or viewer who would likely never use them. Boselli’s inclusion of ladles, sieves, pots, vessels, and platters, whether alluding to culinary preparations or forming part of a scene, can be read as a form of visual inventory. The exhibition of Boselli’s still life scenes in dining and leisure rooms allowed for a painted display of the extensive, expensive, and specialized tools needed to prepare the lavish meals served at court. 45 The Pinacoteca Stuard does not provide a date for the work, but the iconography of the copper basin, which resembles basins found in Arbotori’s canvases, proposes that Boselli may have completed this early work in Arbotori’s workshop. It measures 85 x 135 cm. Giuseppe Cirillo and Giovanni Godi, La Pinacoteca Stuard di Parma (Parma: Segea Editrice, 1987), 142-43. 285 elements of the composition or to juxtapose their shapes to those of the natural products. They do not appear to be gathered to cook a particular dish. At other times, such as in Figure 4.13, the tools seem poised to create a dish with the ingredients depicted. In this canvas, the mushrooms, lemon, garlic, and onions might presumably be ground into a stuffing that will be cooked in the pot and placed into the leg of lamb before roasting. He takes care to paint specialized items such as the knives in Figure 4.5, which include a smembratori and a coltello da raschiare (according to Scappi’s diagram, Figure 2.18). In this case, the larger knife alludes to the task of plucking, eviscerating, and dismembering the chickens and poultry, while the slender knife would be used to slice the cheese. Knives are posed very conspicuously throughout Boselli’s compositions, alluding to both their economic value and the skills of the trinciante (carver). Similar to a banquet carver’s performative presentation of the best cuts of meat and fruit to the head of the table, Boselli compiles and offers the best foodstuffs for the viewer’s consumption. Much like access to the more expensive, decorative, or specialized kitchen utensils was reserved for the personal cooks and stewards of the duke, foodstuffs were allocated hierarchically. Court records not only meticulously documented furnishings, paintings and tableware, but also the daily purchases of foods, spices, and wines and their disbursement through the household. The specificity and control with which these households recorded their culinary habits is evident in an example of the numerous lists of food items required for the daily consumption of the ducal table (Appendix G). 46 46 ASP, CFPP, busta 250. Dated 1568 by a later hand and titled “Tavola, Dispensa e Cucina.” 286 Each day required a specific number of meats, roasted or boiled, soups, pastries, salads, fruits, and cheeses. The keeper of the list (presumably the scalco) was sure to record the cooked dishes needed for both day and evening, lean and fat days. While the ducal family would enjoy the best-quality items, the remaining bocche at court received foodstuffs according to their status. A collection of mostly sixteenth- century documents from the Farnese household illuminate some of the inner workings of its management and “orders of the house.” 47 Create a separate log for those that in eat in the court, table by table, and then according to the number of people, make an order of meat, poultry, vegetables, soups, and condiments that the kitchen needs to bring daily for this service. Do this for fat and lean days and also make the orders of wax, sugar, candles, oil salt, spices, vegetables, lard... The chief steward was to: 48 In particular, the chief steward kept exhaustive records: a log of all the import and consumption of goods, a daily log of bread distribution (by weight), and a log of guests and their needs. The unknown compiler of this list (presumably a Farnese official) insisted that a steward was to keep track of the prices of goods, their flow through the household, and payment through the household accountant. He would then oversee his underlings to do the same for the wine cellar, wood stock, pantries, and so on. The wine steward, for example, also kept a daily log of wine distribution, calculating for each day the recipients of wine, the quality of wine distributed (ordinario or 47 ASP, CCF, Serie VII, busta 51, fasc. 22. 48 Ibid. “2 – Formarà un rollo distinto di tutti quelli che haverano da magnare in corte tavola per tavola, et poi secondo il num.ro delle persone farà uno ordinario della carne, polleria, potaggi, minestre, condimenti che bisognerà dare in cocina giornalmente per d.t: serv.o: tanto in giorno di grasso, e di magro, et anco fare li ordinarij delle cere, zuc.ro, candele di seno, olio, sale, spetiani, ortagli, frutta, lardi...” 287 straordinario), and the amount by bottle. Every Monday, the chief steward and accountant were to hold a meeting to balance the books, with reported daily expenditures from those in charge of the wine, wood, grain. The tinello, or dining room of servants, needed to be supervised and controlled, along with the movement of table and kitchenware throughout the household. The text offers the following precautions against theft: When kitchen workers come to take food from you, they should enter through the pantry...and the others should stay outside, and when you give the items from the cabinet, you should allow only to the overseer of the kitchen and the head cook to enter, and the others should stay at the door to take the items, and no one who enters should speak. 49 Rhetoric of controlled access characterizes the discourse around the storage and circulation of food from the ducal pantries, which makes Boselli’s exorbitantly full paintings seem all the more decadent. Throughout the Farnese documentation, distinctions are made for quality. In the record books, the pantry-keeper is to note not only the amounts of goods that come and go, but also their value, and the same is true of the wine steward. The wardrobe keeper is to create an inventory of goods in alphabetical order that “separates the items by value and type, such as silver, tapestries, beds, linens, clothes...” 50 49 Ibid. “Quando quelli della cocina veranno a pigliar la vivanda da vi lassano entrare in dispensa, et similm.te il crednt.ro di SA li altri stiano di Fuora, et segli dia la robba dal portello, ti lsser’entrare solo il soprastante di cocina, et il capo cuoco, li altri restarano al portello a pigliare le robbe, et de nissun entra a parlare.” The Farnese court earned its reputation for decadence and opulence, but as these documents indicate, extreme caution and calculation went into the managing of the kitchen, staff, and supplies. Thus, the Farnese’s was a carefully 50 Ibid, c.11v. 288 ordered abundance. Fears of theft, food safety, or improper management manifested in the vigilant hierarchy of authorities. Gatto sopra uno storione, porcellani d”india, picchio, allocco, anguille e verdure shows a combination of living and dead animals alongside fruits, vegetables, and kitchen tools, as two cats, an owl, mouse, and two rabbits are situated amongst the fish, eels, onions, lettuces, lemons, game, bread, cheese and ornate serving vessels (Figure 4.9). Boselli experimented with the interplay of echoing formal elements—the elongated eels and curved stalks of onions and greens, for example, and the curly lettuce leaves echoed by the baroque arabesques of the wine jug and platter. The Alchemy of Cooks, Physicians, and Carvers 51 Though early modern cookbook authors discussed the seasonal availability for foods, historical banquet menus reveal that fruits, vegetables, and meats were eaten year-round at aristocratic tables without regard for seasonality. Aristocratic patrons came to expect cherries, artichokes, or lettuces all year. 52 51 The rabbits, cats, owl and mouse may have added layers of symbolic meaning to the scene as parables of hunter and hunted (see how the owl eyes the mouse)—but I focus on Boselli’s depictions of foodstuffs rather than trying to unlock these possibly symbolic elements. Recent scholarship has begun to seriously consider the implications of animals in early modern art. Simona Cohen argues that the presences of animals in Renaissance painting is richly symbolic and explores medieval bestiaries, naturalist studies and emblematic literature as sources of symbolic meanings. Simona Cohen, Animals as Disguised Symbols in Renaissance Art (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008). An orderly list of the Farnese’s food expenses from 1567 gives a daily account of items purchased. For example, on January 6, 1567, a variety of fish, dairy, and candles are listed: carp, snails, domestic doves, young capons, dried walnut, fresh butter, fresh ricotta, large-grain sugar, fresh eggs, 52 Albala, The Banquet, 31-32. 289 cookies, a variety of herbage, as well as windproof torches and wax candles. January 10, 1567 required snails, scallops, carp, hens, milk, butter, salted mushrooms, two types of eggs, windproof torch candles of white wax, ground cinnamon, marzipan biscuits, apples, oranges, lemons, chestnuts, ground saffron and the variety of vegetables. The next (a day of grasso) would include veal, beef, lard, wild duck, and hens. Each day’s list was adapted according to the current stores of the pantry and needs of the kitchen. 53 The Farnese court’s culinary logistics were organized characteristically for the period—frequent banquets, visitors, and the daily needs of the duke, duchess, and court were handled by a hierarchy of cooks and stewards. Illustrating an instance of Farnese banqueting immortalized in print, a festival book describes an event held for Ottavio Farnese in 1561. 54 53 ASP, CFPP, busta 245, “Quaderneto dele spese Or.e di Genaio 1567.” The text describes the banquet, listing the contents of most dishes for each of the five courses (which were made up of twenty-four plates each): salad, fish and salami, meat and pastries, and fruits. The dishes ranged from veal terrine to chestnuts to chicory root. The text also takes care to identify the courtiers and servants present at the banquet. Boselli’s canvases, such as Figure 4.9, invite the viewer to imagine the processes by which the raw materials of scaly eels, feathered birds, or masses of greens transform into refined dishes suitable for the courtly table. In the hundreds of extant examples, none of Boselli’s paintings depict a finished, cooked dish. This is a significant choice of iconography because by depicting only ingredients and tools needed for food preparation, Boselli’s works allude to the skills of the individuals 54 Il famoso convito: cosi delle giostre come del banchetto, che lo illustrissimo & eccel. s. duca di Piacenza, & di Parma, ha fatto della mag. città di Piacenza nello anno M.D.LXI. (Milan: Francesco Moscheni, 1561). 290 responsible for transforming these ingredients into edible meals—the Lardaroli, butchers, cooks and stewards. Macelleria highlights a common element of these works—the collection of meats in their varying guises in preparation for the table (Figure 4.10). The heads of a cow, ram, and pig form a triangular composition, filled in with hanging sausages, a pig’s head and capon, as well as an onion, two hooves, wheels of cheese, and a sliced salami. Per the discussion of Beccai and Lardaroli guilds, the cow, fowl, and ram would be provided by a butcher, with the sausages, salami, pork products and cheese by the Lardaroli. Aristocratic diners had an appreciation of eating the cooked heads of animals, including the eyes, ears, and snout, and they were considered valuable and delicious parts of the animal. 55 The images of skinned cow or pig heads are examples of Scappi capturing the “best” parts of his ingredients for his patrons. The images are also an important allusion to the work of the butcher and carver. As engravings from Mattias Giegher’s Li tre trattati show, butchery was a specialized skill that required knowledge of the anatomy, uses, and flavors of the different animals in order to properly carve and utilize all their parts (Figures 4.11 and 4.12). 56 55 Albala, The Banquet, 171. These illustrations attempted to depict this extensive knowledge and Giegher claimed their ability to teach the art of carving. However, the logistical difficulty of following the visual instructions indicates that they truly functioned to elevate the status of the author and master. 56 Mattia Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1629; Reprint, Reprint: Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1989), n.p. 291 Figure 4.13 shows a piece of butchered lamb, alongside garlic, onions, and mushrooms and its composition alludes to the eventual preparation of a dish. A stuffing of the vegetables might be pounded together in the mortar, drained in the colander, and cooked in the pot. Similarly, the compositions of Figures 4.14, 4.26 and 4.27 are dominated by large animals, expertly butchered and splayed across the canvas. Not only did these meat products specifically connect to Parmense lands, but the trope of the cleanly butchered pig (seen in many of Boselli’s compositions) alludes to another product local to the region, prosciutto. The production of the salted and cured ham was, like Parmesan cheese, strictly regulated. 57 The pigs used for prosciutto and animals sold by the Beccai were from local lands of the state, primarily those of the duchy. 58 This elevation of the butcher and performative banquet carver’s status was documented in numerous printed books and treatises. These were created alongside dozens of books written by cooks working for large courts such as the papal court, the Gonzaga or the Este. The smaller Parma court is unique as documentary evidence of two of its cooks’ work survives in manuscript form. These documents provide a valuable contrast to the existing body of increasingly encyclopedic culinary literature, such as Scappi’s Opera, as the manuscripts either were not intended for publication or failed to go into print. Carlo Nascia first appears in court documents in 1659 as the 57 For example, the animal could only graze on certain types of vegetation, or could be fed the whey and other byproducts from cheese production, and the salts used to cure the legs could only come from nearby Salsomaggiore. Bargelli, “Alle origini di una vocazione alimentare,” 184. See also Baladassare Molossi, La cucina parmigiana (Parma: Silva, 1973) and Enrico dall’Olio, Prosciutto di Parma (Parma: Agenzia 78, 1989). 58 Bargelli, “Alle origini di una vocazione alimentare,” 184. “Le bestie destinate all’uso della Beccaria, anzichè venire ingrassate coi prodotti dei terreni dello Stato, in gran parte escono dal Ducato...” 292 cook under Ranuccio II and is mentioned again in the records in 1672, evidently still in the Farnese’s employ. 59 Little is known of his history and background other than that he was from Palermo. His treatise, Li Quattro banchetti destinati per le quatro stagioni dell’anno (“Four banquets for the four seasons of the year”) exists in four manuscript copies. The oldest, from 1680, is signed by Nascia and dedicated to a Serenissima Altezza, presumably Ranuccio II. 60 Another version, also dated 1680, is housed in London and “Dedicato all’Altezza Seren.ma di Ranutio Secondo Farnese, Duca di Parma, Piacenza e Castro.” 61 The next copy, dated 1681, is dedicated to “Alessandro Sanvitale, Conte di Fontanellato, e di Noceto, & Marchese di Belforte” (Figure 4.15). 62 A third manuscript from 1684 is from the hand of Parmense copyist Carlo Giovanelli and is dedicated to a member of the Meli Lupi family of Soragna. 63 Nascia dedicated his work to the ruling aristocratic families of the area—the same families that were purchasing large-scale series of Felice Boselli’s still life paintings for their palaces and villas. Clearly, both cook and artist desired to work for and flatter these wealthy patrons. 64 59 Zanlari, A tavola con i Farnese, 54. Cooks for the Sanvitale and Meli Lupi did not write treatises, but Nascia’s 60 Palermo, Biblioteca Comunale di Palermo, MS del Sec. XVII in 4° = 2Qq C 38. 61 London, Wellcome Library, MS. 3661. 62 BPP, MS PR 3818. 63 Reprinted in Carlo Nascia, Li quattro banchetti destinati per le quattro stagioni dell’anno, ed. Massimo Alberini (Bologna: Arnaldo Forni Editore, 1981). (Reprint of 1684 edition, which is housed in the library of the Meli Lupi castle at Soragna). 64 Other culinary manuals had been dedicated to members of the Roman branch of the Farnese family. Vincenzio Cervio dedicated Il Trinciante to his employer, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (Venice, 1581); Sante Lancerio, I vini d'Italia giudicati da papa Paolo III (Farnese) e dal suo bottigliere Sante Lancerio. Operetta tratta dal manoscritto della biblioteca di Ferrara e per la prima volta pubblicata da Giuseppe 293 dedications to these local lords certainly indicates a mutual desire for possession of this expert cook’s culinary knowledge. It was common in existing culinary literature, such as Bartolomeo Stefani’s L'Arte di ben cucinare and Cristoforo Messisbugo’s Banchetti, composizioni di vivande et apparecchio generale, to describe actual banquets, enumerating the exact number and types of dishes served, the time and place of the meal, and the distinguished guests in attendance—a feature that undoubtedly served to impress aristocratic readers as much as to assist actual cooks. However, Nascia’s treatise functions as a template for banquets but never describes actual events. It is curious that the work is characterized (as the title indicates) by attention to the availability of various foodstuffs in the appropriate season, rather than reporting historical banquets. It proposes menus and table decorations without presenting who, or why, the guests would come to sit at the table. 65 Tracing the recipes in the treatise, it is clear that Nascia enjoyed a familiarity with a variety of cuisines that may indicate work in Milan under the Spanish court (or had traveled there with Ranuccio and made contact with local cooks). Many recipes appear with the designation “alla spagnola” or “alla catalana.” He mentions chocolate, an indication that by the late seventeenth century, even smaller courts such as the Farnese enjoyed the diffusion of certain products from the Americas. 66 Ferrara (Rome: Fratelli Capaccini, 1890) was printed later but the original manuscript was composed by the wine steward for Pope Paolo III Farnese. 65 Zanlari, A tavola con i Farnese, 55. 66 Nascia, Li quattro banchetti destinati per le quattro stagioni dell’anno, ed. Alberini, xxvii. 294 The work otherwise tends to follow the conventions of culinary literature. It is organized with a table of contents for easy reference to the recipes and begins with a discussion of advice and tips for the working cook (Figure 4.16). He gives the organization of banquets for spring, summer, autumn, and the lean season and for each Nascia recommends the appropriate trionfi, or sugar sculptures, and around twenty-four cold plates, thirty hot plates, and nineteen roasted meats. He then lists recipes for other dishes, including vegetables, sweets, soups, pastries and tortes, and condiments. He also includes some general rules and recommendations for working with quadrupeds, fowl, and fish. 67 For a mountain turkey, larded and roasted, you should make a sauce ‘alla Borgia.’ Take two anchovies and two ounces of oil, and lemon, raising the shorter, softer side and it cut it up in very small pieces and put it in the oil with the anchovy and then put two cups of vinegar, but even better is to mix in Judging from this collection, the author aims neither for an exhaustive account of the properties of each type of food, nor a journalistic record of banquets he had produced, but rather for a record of his expertise and versatility in the production of banquet dishes in a courtly setting. Indeed, the limited circulation of the manuscript contrasts greatly with the comparatively large production of printed culinary treatises. Where those illustrated books offered elite readers a sumptuous glimpse into lavish food preparation and admiration of the countless skills of a cook or steward, Nascia’s manuscript was seemingly intended to raise his status on a local level and serve as a more practical guide. A recipe for turkey showcases his knowledge of this item as well as the custom of associating specific preparations with ruling courts: 67 Surprisingly, Nascia does not make frequent mention of Parma’s famed parmigiano reggiano, but rather tends to specify “formaggio lodigiano.” Zanlari postulates that author and reader would assume the use of Parmesan cheeses, salami, and prosciutto. Zanlari, A tavola con i Farnese, 56. 295 breadcrumbs that have been mixed with three or four ounces of sugar and nutmeg, and pepper, and cook this in an earthenware pot... 68 An aristocratic viewer of Figure 4.1, displayed in the Sanvitale residence, might see the large, alert turkey on the right of the composition and imagine it oiled, roasted and smothered with this savory sauce. Nascia’s treatise is a small but significant testament to the small Parma court, evoking his skill with sugar sculpture or new preparations “alla francese.” Nascia’s death and the end of his service to the Farnese is not recorded, however, a new cuoco segreto, Antonio Maria Dalli of Bologna was documented in 1692. His payment was subdivided according to his duties as pastry cook and cook, and he received a certain amount of cash each month for his own food needs: Master Antonio Dalli will serve as pastry cook and cook in the duke’s private kitchen, and for this, he will receive 126 lire each month; that is a 30 lire commission as pastry cook, a 70 lire commission as private cook, and 26 lire for food [to eat with bread] in cash and this will be given at the beginning of each month, to commence May 20, 1692, as ordered by the Marquis Rangoni, head majordomo. 69 Dalli worked for Ranuccio II and his son Francesco until 1703 at which point he exited court life to become a monk. Dalli left behind a recipe treatise, Piciol Lume di Cucina, 68 “Un Gallo d’India di Montagna à Rosto alardato, e vi farai una salsa alla Borgia. pigliarai due Anchiode, e due Onze d’Oglio, e Limone, Levandoli La scorcia sotile, e tagliarla ben minuta, e metterla nell’Oglio con L’Anchiode, poscia vi metterai due tazze d’acetto mà buona e del pane grattato tanto che venghi fissa con tre o quattr’onze di Zuccaro fino con noce moscata, e pepe, e và cotta in pignata di terra vibriata, e all’intorno guernirai con Carchiofasi pieni, e Cavoli fiori, e Li farai bollire avanti che Li arostichi.” 69 Qtd. in Zanlari, A tavola con i Farnese, 57. Farnese records from May 1692. “Maestro Antonio Dalli serve per pasticciere e cuoco in cucina segreta di sua altezza serenissma deve havere ogni mese Lire 126 di moneta corrente, cioe Lire 30 per provigione come pasticciere, Lire 70 per provigione come cuoco in cucina segreata e lire 26 per il companatico a denari e questo anticipato in principio di ciascun mese da principiarsi li 20 meggio 1692, come dall’ordine del sig. marchese Rangoni maggiordomo maggiore.” 296 col quale ognuno dar potra molto splendore ad ogni pranso ordinario (Figure 4.17). Perhaps in line with Francesco’s attempts to reign in the court’s spending, the Dalli text speaks not to banquets, but to everyday life. Dalli does not address exclusively court practice but rather produces a rather modest treatise devoted to preparing the appropriate food. This manuscript was not published but was produced by the same copyist, Carlo Giovanelli, who worked with Nascia. The Biblioteca Palatina copy is dated 1701, dedicated to Carlo Buralli, the guardaroba maggiore of the duke, and is the only extant copy (Figure 4.18). 70 a rigor of cleanliness, not only for the kitchen, copper equipment, and plates but for your own body, to dress in the cleanest clothes...including a white apron, and never begin to work without washing your hands, and advise those who work in the kitchen to stay sharp... The design of the presentation page and front matter is elegant with its cross-hatched, scrolling designs. The manuscript is finely decorated with pen and ink designs throughout, presumably executed by copyist Giovanelli (Figure 4.19). As the table of contents indicates, this slender volume is organized by recipe or method of cooking. Unlike most of his contemporary culinary authors, Dalli makes no mention of banquets, sugar sculpture, or other “excesses.” He begins with advice for the cuoco, or cuciniera, which is significant as it is one of the first mentions of a female cook in a culinary text. For the cook, above all he recommends: 71 70 Antonio Maria Dalli, Piciol lume di cucina con quale ogn’uno dar potrà molto splendore ad ogni Pranso, BPP, MS PR 233. 71 Dalli, Piciol lume di cucina, front matter. “Avertimenti per Il Cuoco, ò Cvciniera: Deve sopra il tutto haver rigado alla pulicia non tanto della cucina, ne Rami, e Piatti, come nelle persone preurando di vestire il più pulito, che puole, tolerandosi più tosto un vestito lacero, che lordo, e deve havere gran riguardo di haver sempre le sue Camise bianche, e particolarmento il Grembiale deve avvertire di non porsi al lavoro prima di lavarsi ben le mani, e avisare chi pratica in Cucina di stare ben netti, e che alcuno non habbi ardire di petenarsi, ne fare altri atti, che soglionorecar nausea à chi deve usare li Cibi.” 297 Dalli’s recipes are straightforward and focus on soups, sauces, fried items, roasts, tortes and pastries, with cookies and biscuits at the end. One example is: ‘Healthy Soup’ Take the boiled or roasted meat of a capon or chicken, or hen and separate it from the bone and skin, and then grind it up with a knife on a clean table, then put it in a stone mortar and crush it up well, and mix with a good strong broth, but not too strong and press through a sieve until clear, and put it in a large enough pot and add melon or squash seeds that have been ground in a mortar (like the meat) and push them through a sieve or cloth until clear and then put them in the pot with the meat, and place over a low fire and let it boil very lightly and cook. Then add egg yolks and lemon juice, in the same way as for the endive soup, and when you are ready to serve, add clean, ground pistachios. 72 The decorative pen and ink flourishes belie the rather modest nature of this text. Rather than dedicating it to the duke or other aristocracy, Dalli highlights one of his fellow court officials, the master of the guardaroba, showing the esteem that these domestic officials had reached. Rather than emphasizing lavish banquets, he lists more simple recipes intended for modest meals, in keeping with the title of his volume, “Small light of the kitchen.” At this time, printed recipe books and culinary treatises were in high demand. Aristocratic families, including the Farnese and Sanvitale, collected these books in their libraries. Court stewards, cooks, and carvers recorded their expertise in the guise of instructional manuals that were intended to elevate and promote their professions for a 72 Dalli, Piciol lume di cucina, 6-6v. “Minestra detta della Sanità: Prenderai polpa di Capone, o di Pollastro, o Gallina perima cotta a Lesso, o a Rosto, e la dividerai dall’Osso, e dalla Pelle, di poi La pesterai con coltello sopra una Tavola pulita, poscia La metterai in Mortaro di Pietra pestandola bene, e La stemprerai con buon brodo di sostanza in forma di Brodetto, ma non tanto serato e La prascerai per setacio chiaro, e La metterai in Pignata a Misura del bisogno e piglierai seme di Meloni, o Zula Monde, quali pesterai in Mortaro, come facesti La carne e stempratole passerai per settacio, o drappo essendo il setacio troppo chiaro, e Le metterai nella Pignata, ov’e La polpa, ponendola al fuoco, che sia Lento, e La farai bollire pian piano, e cotta che sara vi metterai torli d’Ova et agro di Limoni, nel modo che facesti nela Minestra di torri d’Indivia e volendola servire vi metterai sopra Pestacchi ben mondi, e puliti.” 298 wider but largely elite audience. In contrast, these luxurious manuscripts produced by Parmense cooks would never disseminate beyond a tightly constricted sphere and circulated only within the confines of the Farnese, Sanvitale, and Meli Lupi courts. The culinary information contained in these treatises was possessed only by local patrons and the dedications to local lords indicate the authors’ desire to flatter and maintain the good graces of these employers. These proud cooks desired a more permanent format for their knowledge and by producing these manuscripts for court patrons, ensured that their careers and skills lived beyond their lifetime. This was mutually agreeable for their padroni, who were then able to possess the culinary knowledge of their domestic officials along with the kitchens, tableware, ovens, pots, and pans used to fabricate a sumptuous culinary culture. Culinary professionals practiced a sort of alchemy that would transform the raw materials of Boselli’s groaning tables into elegant dishes. Allusions to the mastery needed to transform these raw materials into pies, tortes, jellies, and salads are made plain by the works’ display in dining spaces. Viewers would be consuming the “masterworks” of the court cook while marveling at the visual abundance of foodstuffs that were utilized to create such a meal. The popularity of Boselli’s graphic, large-scale depictions of meats and produce should be understood in this framework. By owning and displaying series of such images, aristocratic patrons could exercise their dominion over seemingly uncontrollable elements including nature and agricultural yields. Additionally, the painted theme of food preparation allowed the patron another mode of possessing the expensive, elaborate culinary culture that had emerged to meet their needs. The copious and meticulously executed fruit and 299 vegetable bounties, cheeses and pork products of Boselli’s works would have connected to a specifically Parmense pride in alimentary production and transformation. Four of Boselli’s large-scale paintings are still housed in the Rocca Sanvitale (now operating as a museum), in the sala da pranzo and sala del biliardo (dining and billiard rooms) (Figures 4.20, 4.21, 4.22). While there is no archival documentation of when these paintings came to be hung in these particular rooms, it is worth noting that they are now placed in spaces of dining and leisure, perhaps their original location. The sala da pranzo is frescoed with coats of arms of aristocratic Italian families that the Sanvitale aspired to connect with such as the Gonzaga and Farnese. In addition to the two Boselli canvases, large credenze hold pottery and dishes from the Sanvitale collections. In the adjoining room for playing billiards, two more Boselli works are displayed, which make up a series with the works in the dining room. Collecting Terroir: Boselli’s works for the Sanvitale 73 73 Marzio dall’Acqua, Gianni Guadalupi, and Franco Maria Ricci, Fontanellato: La Rocca Sanvitale (Villanova di Castenaso: FMR spa, 2002), 13. The Rocca, a residence of the Sanvitale family from the thirteenth century until 1948, emerges from a shallow moat in the village of Fontanellato, a province in the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza (Figure 4.20). The architecture of the castle is characterized by a stone facade punctuated with windows, with a crenellated wall to protect the fortress – though many alterations have been made in its lifetime. This castle’s artistic fame comes primarily from a small room decorated in 1523-24 with frescoes by Parmigianino addressing the 300 theme of Diana and Acteon. 74 Boselli also frescoed an adjacent parlor with an ornamental frieze made up of floral designs, landscapes, and winged griffins from the Sanvitale coat of arms. 75 Two lunettes in outdoor passageways are also of Boselli’s hand and show his characteristic inclusion of swags of naturalistic fruits and vegetables (Figure 4.23). 76 The two Boselli works in the sala di pranzo display primarily fish and vegetables along with hunting dogs in a forested outdoor setting. Natura morta con pesci, canestro di pane, verdure, ecc. poses heaps of fish, snails, crayfish alongside lettuces and vegetables on a rock ledge, with a large basket of bread partially covered by a white cloth, an urn for water or wine, and to the right of this arrangement, a cat sniffs at an eel below a bundle of onions (Figure 4.24). A straw flask of red wine hangs from a rocky outcropping and below the dangling flask sits a gleaming copper bowl. The pendant to this work also displays primarily fish and seafood. Natura morta di magro con cani, gatti e merluzzi freely combines fish and the accoutrements of fishing—baskets, buckets, nets, knives—with game birds, living and dead, the usual curious cats, hunting dogs, bread, and red peppers (Figure 4.25). The scene is constructed and framed with a sturdy table, the remnant of a fluted column, and fishing 74 An eighteenth-century mirror-room (camera ottica) allowed the family surveillance of the activity in the piazza surrounding the castle. 75 Boselli also frescoed two walls of a larger portrait gallery with putti. 76 On still life painting’s orgins and fruit swags in painting, see Nicole Dacos, “Alle fonti della natura morta: Giovanni da Udine e le nature morte nei festoni,” in Francesco Zeri and Francesco Porzio, eds. La natura morta in Italia, vol. 1 (Milan: Electa, 1989), 55-68. 301 ropes and nets. These works are notable for their iconography devoted primarily to freshwater fish, snails, and crayfish, along with game birds. Two complementary works are displayed in the adjacent sala di biliardo. Natura morta con mezzina di maiale, pecore, cacciagone, ecc., described above, combines a butchered pig with game birds, sheep, lemons and a turkey (Figure 4.26). Similarly, a large part of Mezzina di montone appesa e gatto che ruba un’oca spennata is devoted to the reddish flesh of a bisected sheep (Figure 4.27). The remainder of the composition is made up of fowl (several living), a cat sniffing a plucked goose, and a considerable amount of kitchen tools including several platters, plates and bowls, baskets, a ladle, and the shadow of a wine flask. This series highlights domestic and wild animals in varying stages of their preparation and transition from living creature to edible food for human consumption. This division in the series between works depicting fish or pork, lamb and other terrestrial meats relates directly to the early modern liturgical calendar and its corresponding dietary regulations. Church ritual dictated major differences between grasso, fat or magro, lean days. This tradition beginning in medieval Italy and continues today to some degree. For the Lenten period, as well as days before religious festivals, ecclesiastical and lay diets were to be restricted; animal products were not permitted at the table. At wealthier tables, such as the sixteenth-century Sanvitale’s, this would be interpreted rather loosely, with large cuts of fish and other freshwater creatures replacing pork or beef on these days. The meal would not suffer in luxury, but the main sources of protein and fat were changed to symbolize the differences between 302 these days. A skilled cook therefore was obliged to understand these differences (i.e. eggs and cheese were occasionally permitted, but rarely during Lent) and possess the ability to produce meals confirming to the restrictions. The cycle of fat and lean days along with the continuously renewing festive calendar was, like the foods that were consumed in conjunction with it, a fundamental element in the shaping of early modern life. Boselli’s division of the series into scenes of grasso and magro attests to the potency of this underlying structure of diet and mentality. Indeed, Scappi’s text includes instructions for substitutions on lean days: in a preparation for lobster soup, he reminds the reader: After it has boiled for a quarter of an hour, thicken it with egg yolks the way you do with thick meat-paste soups. On fasting days use ground almonds or grated bread rather than eggs. You can thicken all the above pottages the same way. 77 He includes a recipe for “mock ricotta and butter from almonds” and numerous preparation that differentiate ingredients for Lent, fasting, and non-fasting days. 78 in order to be good, more than anything else any fish must be fresh – except for the sturgeon which, when big, should be left awhile before being made into food. Similarly every fish intended for frying, for grilling and for sousing in vinegar, should be of moderate size rather than too big. And all fish that you intend to use for making jelly, for preserving in vinegar and for salting must be alive. On the preparation of fish for “lean and lenten days,” Scappi opines, 79 As seen in Natura morta con pesci, canestro di pane, verdure, ecc. (Figure 4.24) the crabs and crayfish are alive, skittering about the table, a reference to the custom of 77 Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, 340. 78 Ibid., 355-73. 79 Ibid., 275. 303 cooking these creatures while alive. Boselli therefore not only captures the fishes but he does so in a way that intimates the conditions that will transform into soups, pottages, jellies, or pies. The larger-than-life scale of the works and their treatment of grasso and magro themes connect them with the coded rituals of food consumption as dictated by liturgical ritual. The Sanvitale used their rural residences as outposts for the recreational activities of hunting and fishing, as did most aristocratic courts. Nobles’ passion for this pastime is well-documented, as rural lands were often transformed into hunting preserves for them. Like other leisure pursuits, a literature emerged devoted to the art of hunting, with an example of the lavishly illustrated book by Eugenio Raimondi, Delle cacci (Figure 4.28 and 4.29). 80 The Sanvitale were known for hunting and fishing. As seventeenth-century commentator Carlo Fontana noted, "The fish that lurk here, are considered so because of the abundance, so the quality and thickness, having been repeatedly caught pike of a burden and a half, and sometimes eels eleven, and thirteen pounds." 81 80 Eugenio Raimondi, Delle caccie (Naples: Lazzaro Scorriggio, 1626). Engravings by Nicolas Perrey. Boselli’s subject matter is richly evocative of hunting and fishing ritual. In particular, he represents the end of a successful day by both the darkening skies and heaps of prize game and fish. Aside from hunting animals, aristocrats also enjoyed the pastime of gathering wild berries and fruits (which were then cleaned and prepared by servants), another activity evincing desires for pastoral escape to the 81 Qtd. in Arisi, Felice Boselli, 27. 304 protected lands of their family. 82 The canvases allude to the hunting prowess of the court and its visitors, the promise of feasting in massive variety and quantity, and the continuously regenerating bounty of the lands. The Meli Lupi (the third dedicatee of Carlo Nascia’s culinary manuscript) was another powerful feudal family in the region. Their primary residence was a castle in Soragna, first built in the fourteenth century but transformed into a princely residence in the sixteenth. Boselli’s Paintings for the Meli Lupi Castle of Soragna 83 The Meli Lupi hired local artists including Felice Boselli, Ferdinando and Francesco Galli Bibbiena, Nicolò dell’Abate, and others to decorate the palace. In 1696, the Meli Lupi family commissioned Ferdinando and Francesco Galli Bibbiena to execute paintings celebrating the family in a second floor gallery (Figure 4.30) 84 82 Albala, The Banquet, 38-39. In panels accentuated by their trademark baroque trompe l’oeil architecture and billowing curtains, the series illustrates the key scenes in the Meli Lupi’s ascent to political power and familial history. One such fresco is a banquet scene depicting Charles V visiting the Meli Lupi in Soragna and the moment that the he granted the Marquis Giampaolo Meli permission to retain both the Meli and Lupi names (Figure 30). On an upper register, the emperor’s table is surrounded by courtiers and attendants, bustling around him as they prepare the presentation of a large, dressed bird on a platter to the guest of 83 The Meli Lupi descendents still own and operate the castle as a museum. 84 The Galli Bibbiena also decorated the Sala di Stucchi in the Rocca. The brothers were employed by Ranuccio II Farnese as painters, architects, and set designers. 305 honor. A smaller, more modestly appointed table is situated below the emperor’s table; Giampaolo Meli is seated at this lesser table. The Galli Bibbiena employed a hierarchy of scale and two tables on upper and lower registers to compose an image that substantiates the hierarchal access to culinary culture. The emperor’s status is conferred and reaffirmed by his seat at the larger, more sumptuous table, while the devotion of the Marquis is communicated by his simpler fare, smaller table, and lack of attending courtiers. At the same time, the largess of Meli Lupi hospitality is presented and celebrated in the fresco. Boselli’s works for the Meli Lupi castle in Soragna included two sets of six oval paintings executed in 1699 (Figures 4.31, 4.32, 4.33) and 1708 (Figures 4.35, 4.36, 4.37). Four works from the second set (1708) are currently displayed in the dining room of the palace (Figure 4.34), a placement that likely reflects the original display. In both series, the oval canvases depict some combination of fish, game, vegetables and fruits, dogs, and human figures. 85 85 These works include human figures, unlike many of Boselli’s compositions, a trope that can be attributed to the influences of Flemish works that he may have been exposed to (such as the Farnese’s Beukelaer collection). The figures could be understood as social types rather than individuals—children, elderly, fishermen, and merchants of poultry, fish, and produce. The figures either display or tend to the goods, the disparate shapes and sizes of which are expertly composed to complement and echo the oval shape of the canvas. For example, one of the works from the 1708 series displays a massive reddish fish, seemingly on its way out of a wooden barrel (Figure 4.37). Two fishermen frame the scene at the bottom right as the older man hands a crab to the younger boy. Shoulder-level to the older fisherman is a rocky ledge upon which the fish, shells, and barrel sit. The landscape is a rocky cliff with pinkening sky and an owl 306 sits atop the barrel. The composition of the work can be characterized by tensions between movement and stasis—the act of handing over the prickly, clawing crab contrasts the motionless stupor of the whiskered fish and the still, watchful eye of the owl. In this work, Boselli shows his knowledge of fish anatomies as many varieties are depicted and each joint of the crab is carefully rendered. Indeed, in all the oval paintings for the Meli Lupi, Boselli’s work demonstrates his visual mastery of an extraordinarily wide variety of fish, birds, and plant life. Taking the two works in Figure 4.31 as another example, over ten different specimens of fish, crabs, and turtles are depicted (along with shells, birds, fruit, and mushrooms). Boselli’s impulse towards portraying an extensive repertoire of animals (living and dead) in his canvases further evinces the impulses towards cataloging, classifying, and collecting as seen in natural history and philosophy of the time. But these are painted collections specifically of the edible specimens of nature. Like Garzoni, Boselli employs a naturalistic style to construct bounties of consumable nature, to be hung in the same spaces that viewers would consume meats, fish, fruits, and vegetables. Cooks’ experimentation with the natural world came through processing, preparing, cooking, and eating plants and animals. Subsequently, their published treatises shared conceptual and formal characteristics with texts of natural philosophy and natural history. Boselli’s still life series cataloged edible plants and animals as well as the tools needed to prepare them. Therefore, his imagery existed in a conceptual space between man’s initial engagement with and eventual domination of nature through consumption. Themes of man’s supremacy within the natural world, control over its resources, and expert skills are 307 clearly expressed through his compositions that represent the transformation of raw materials into edible foodstuffs. The practice of producing groups of complementary paintings conforms to the seventeenth-century taste for serial subject matter including allegorical virtues, the four seasons, and Roman emperors. However, the serial format was especially suited to the depiction of edible bounty. Series of large (or small, in Giovanna Garzoni’s case) works evoke the idea that multiple works are needed to accurately depict the diversity and abundance of the food production of the surrounding lands. The sense of plentifulness can be expanded exponentially with the series format. Susan Stewart proposes that collections of series allow the collector to experience a pleasurable sense of domination and control: To play with series is to pay with the fire of infinity. In the collection the threat of infinity is always met with the articulation of boundary. Simultaneous sets are worked against each other in the same way that attention to the individual object and attention to the whole are worked against each other. The collection thus appears as a mode of control and containment in so far as it is a mode of generation and series. 86 Stewart’s assessment is especially useful when considering the popularity of series of food paintings in seventeenth-century Italian villa residences. Such collections staged the “infinity” of nature but the boundaries of frame and the limited subject matter (to those plants and animals which man could consume) acted as “a mode of control.” Boselli’s works naturalistically convey wonders of nature, be they exotic birds or ripe peppers. However, he never expresses the sublime—for Boselli, nature is posed as a 86 Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993), 159. 308 contained, dominated element, whether by the butcher’s knife or fishing net. For the Sanvitale and Meli Lupi, the daily consumption of the edible riches of their lands was redoubled in their collection, or “consumption” of Boselli’s lavish, large-scale paintings. He included signals of authorial presence through the curious cats in the paintings, while presenting opulent gatherings of foodstuffs that conformed to late seventeenth-century culinary culture. By working in a series, he often repeated tropes of consumables and these repetitions and re-contextualizations echoed the rhythms of elite dining (where, for example, pork products might be served in the same meal in several different dishes). I contend that this collection and display of seventeenth-century still life paintings is central to understanding their significance as culinary-cultural capital for the individuals and families that possessed them. As I have argued, courts with strong interests in developing the culinary arts (by producing large feasts and employing the new masters of the art) were the same that commissioned and purchased Boselli’s series of still life paintings with food as subjects. The paintings were created and displayed in groups or pendant pieces, a format that enhanced the sense of abundance and wealth that was desired by their collectors. The hermetic collection of fruits, vegetables, fish, and game on canvas did not merely reflect the natural world outside the villa walls, but projected sense of control and agricultural wealth that often contradicted the reality of the courts' circumstances. Therefore, the inclusion of still life paintings of foodstuffs in the aristocratic collection demonstrates a desire for the control and classification of nature, something paralleled in developments in natural philosophy. The series of still 309 life paintings comprise a collection of aesthetically beautiful, properly prepared, edible goods, and as Stewart writes, “to have a representative collection is to have both the minimum and the complete number of elements necessary for an autonomous world—a world which his both full and singular, which has banished repetition and achieved authority.” 87 But by placing these works in the domestic sphere, in spaces often intended for dining or leisure, humanity's control over the plants and animals of nature—through their capture, transformation, and eventual consumption—is asserted. Constant struggles over land in the region meant that for the Farnese, Sanvitale, and Meli Lupi, purchasing and displaying large-scale oil paintings of edible foodstuffs provided a means of representing their control over their territories and nature itself. 87 Stewart, On Longing, 158. 310 Figure 4.1: Felice Boselli, Natura morta con mezzina di maiale, pecore, cacciagone ecc., c.1690, Fontanellato, Museo Civico Sanvitale 311 Figure 4.2: Joachim Beuckelaer, Fish Market, 1569, Naples, Museo di Capodimonte 312 Figure 4.3: Felice Boselli, Self-portrait, c. 1710, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi 313 Figure 4.4: Felice Boselli, Self-portrait, c. 1720, Parma, Galleria Nazionale 314 Figure 4.5: Felice Boselli, Angolo di dispensa con pollame e verdure, 1680-90, Brescia, private collection 315 Figure 4.6: Felice Boselli, Angolo di dispensa con pane, formaggio, funghi, verdure e ciliegie, 1680-90, Brescia, private collection (82 x 100 cm.) 316 Figure 4.7: San Lucio Protettore dell’arte de lardaroli là di cui festa si celebra alli XII di luglio, engraving, Archivio di Stato di Parma (82 x 100 cm.) 317 Figure 4.8: Felice Boselli (possibly the in workshop of Bartolomeo Arbotori), Natura morta con verdura e selvaggina, 1650-1732, Parma, Pinacoteca Stuard 318 Figure 4.9: Felice Boselli, Gatto sopra uno storione, porcellani d”india, picchio, allocco, anguille e verdure, c.1690 (165 x 220 cm.) 319 Figure 4.10: Felice Boselli, Macelleria, 1690-1700, Bergamo, private collection (93 x 147 cm.) 320 Figure 4.11: Engravings from Mattias Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639), Getty Research Institute, ID number: 1561-566 321 Figure 4.12: Engravings from Mattias Giegher, Li tre trattati (Padua, 1639), Getty Research Institute, ID number: 1561-566 322 Figure 4.13: Felice Boselli, Quarto di vitello, funghi, sporta e utensili domestici, 1690- 1700, Bergamo, Galleria Lorenzelli 323 Figure 4.14: Felice Boselli, Macelleria, 1720-30 324 Figure 4.15: Title page, Carlo Nascia, Li quattro banchetti (1681), Biblioteca Palatina. MS PR 3818 325 Figure 4.16: Table of Contents, Carlo Nascia, Li quattro banchetti (1681), Biblioteca Palatina. MS PR 3818 326 Figure 4.17: Title page, Antonio Maria Dalli, Piciol lume di cucina con quale ogn’uno dar potrà molto splendore ad ogni Pranso (1701), Biblioteca Palatina MS PR 233 327 Figure 4.18: Dedication, Antonio Maria Dalli, Piciol lume di cucina con quale ogn’uno dar potrà molto splendore ad ogni Pranso (1701), Biblioteca Palatina MS PR 233 328 Figure 4.19: Table of Contents, Antonio Maria Dalli, Piciol lume di cucina con quale ogn’uno dar potrà molto splendore ad ogni Pranso (1701), Biblioteca Palatina MS PR 233 329 Figure 4.20: Fontanellato, La Rocca Sanvitale, Museo Civico Sanvitale 330 Figure 4.21: Photo of current museum display with Felice Boselli works, dining room, Fontanellato, La Rocca Sanvitale, Museo Civico Sanvitale 331 Figure 4.22: Photo of current museum display with Felice Boselli works, billiard room, Fontanellato, La Rocca Sanvitale, Museo Civico Sanvitale 332 Figure 4.23: Frescoes above two doors off the second floor, exterior Fontanellato, La Rocca Sanvitale, Museo Civico Sanvitale 333 Figure 4.24: Felice Boselli, Natura morta con pesci, canestro di pane, verdure ecc., c.1690, Fontanellato, Museo Civico Sanvitale 334 Figure 4.25: Felice Boselli, Natura morta di magro con cani, gatti e merluzzi, c.1690, Fontanellato, Museo Civico Sanvitale 335 Figure 4.26: Felice Boselli, Mezzina di montone appesa e gatto che ruba un’oca spennata, c.1690, Fontanellato, Museo Civico Sanvitale 336 Figure 4.27: Felice Boselli, Natura morta con mezzina di maiale, pecore, cacciagone ecc., c. 1690, Fontanellato, Museo Civico Sanvitale 337 Figure 4.28: Title page of Eugenio Raimondi, Delle caccie (Naples, 1626). Engravings by Nicolas Perrey. 338 Figure 4.29: Engraving from Eugenio Raimondi, Delle caccie (Naples, 1626). Engravings by Nicolas Perrey. 339 Figure 4.30: Grande Galleria with banquet fresco by Ferdinando and Francesco Galli Bibbiena, Rocca di Soragna 340 Figure 4.31: Felice Boselli, Giovanetto, funghi, frutti, pesci, piccioni and Vecchio e fanciulla che osservano una tartaruga e dei pesci, 1699, Soragna, Rocca di Soragna, collection of Prince B. Meli Lupi 341 Figure 4.32: Felice Boselli, Uomo che sta esaminando dei pesci di mare and Uomo con turbante che esamina dei pesci e della cacciagione, 1699, Soragna, Rocca di Soragna, collection of Prince B. Meli Lupi 342 Figure 4.33: Felice Boselli, Giovane cacciatore con selvaggina and Vecchio con selvaggina, pesci e frutti, 1699, Soragna, Rocca di Soragna, collection of Prince B. Meli Lupi 343 Figure 4.34: Photo of current museum display with four Felice Boselli works, Dining Room, Rocca di Soragna 344 Figure 4.35: Felice Boselli, Due putti che bisticciano; testa di bue scuoiata e selvaggina and Vecchio e ragazza con cacciagone, 1708, Soragna, Rocca di Soragna, collection of Prince B. Meli Lupi 345 Figure 4.36: Felice Boselli, Ortolana and Donna e bambino che imboccano un’anitra, 1708, Soragna, Rocca di Soragna, collection of Prince B. Meli Lupi 346 Figure 4.37: Felice Boselli, Pesci, Un vecchio porge a un giovane un granchio and Pescatore con squalo e aragosta, 1708, Soragna, Rocca di Soragna, collection of Prince B. Meli Lupi 347 Conclusion By the end of the seventeenth century, the publication of texts written by professional cooks and stewards in Italy declined along with the court culture from which they emerged. As the extensive domestic treatises of Scappi, Giegher, and others were taken out of print, translated cooking texts from France began to dominate the market. While the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries marked the spread of Italian cooking and its treatises throughout Europe, eighteenth-century aristocratic gastronomic culture increasingly relied on French texts and tastes. In the 1730s, both the Medici and Farnese lines ended with the deaths of Gian Gastone de'Medici and Antonio Farnese. In Florence, the dukes of Lorraine assumed power, but the last Medici, Anna Maria had stipulated that all Medici property remain in Florence and in the hands of the ducal line. This act, written in 1737, legally bound the extensive collections of art, books, and archives of the Medici to the city, setting the stage for the perpetuation of Florentine art as the supposed center of Renaissance cultural production (a process initiated by Vasari). A different fate befell the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza. The chosen heir to the last duke, Antonio, was his nephew, Don Carlos of Spain who assumed the ducal throne at the age of sixteen. After taking control of the Spanish Bourbon kingdom and re-christening himself Charles of Bourbon, he relocated the majority of the Farnese art, library, and archival collections from Parma to Naples. In 1745 he transferred the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza to Austria. The close of the Medici and Farnese lines corresponded with—and helped effect—the wane in publication of Italian cooking 348 treatises and the production of still life painting as foreign powers took control of Italian courts. From a copperplate engraving of a master steward’s hands pleating napkins to a massive oil painting of over twenty varieties of fish and seafood, this dissertation has examined the intersections between the histories of cooking, consumption, and representation in seventeenth-century Florence and Parma. Key questions about the articulation of culinary knowledge in word and image and the representation of sensual, physical pleasures connect the diverse studies that form this project. Food—and its representation—is never neutral; beliefs and taboos of diet are some of the most strongly held and vehemently defended principles of any society. Culinary culture provides a unique locus for the study of the display of power and status, the rituals of nutrition and health, and the mediation between nature and man. A historicized study of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Italian culinary culture offers a model for analysis that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries (of the histories of court culture, art, food, and science) and proposes a new line of inquiry for the transmission and recording of food production. At the Medici and Farnese courts of seventeenth-century Italy, both the daily and ritual feeding of the hundreds of dependent or visiting bocche was both a massive expenditure and opportunity for the constant affirmation of social order. This courtly culinary culture developed hierarchical modes of storing, preparing, and presenting food. Domestic officials themselves operated within strictly delineated roles. For example, archival records indicate the strictly regulated circulation of valuable kitchen 349 equipment and underscore the differences between the private cooks and kitchens for preparing the ducal family’s meals and the communal kitchens for the larger court. As the workings of the kitchen became more structured and codified, the presentation and ingestion of food became more ritualized and theatrical. Late Renaissance banquet cooking routinely blurred the lines between nature and artifice, as we have seen in dishes ranging from mock pears made of fish to roasted peacocks re-dressed with their own colorful plumes to twittering songbirds flying from freshly baked pies. Festival books, manuscripts, cookbooks, and still life painting all worked to capture the ephemeral and exploit the possibilities of text and image to reenact the rituals of culinary culture long after the actual preparation or consumption of food. I have argued for the agency of domestic officials in shaping culinary culture and ensuring its role as a central locus of court protocol. Gastronomic culture has traditionally been viewed as a product of court life, but I argue for a more nuanced correlation in which the representations of food and cooking in print or painting ensured its cultural centrality. The producers and consumers of culinary imagery played complementary roles that assured the vital role of a refined and theatrical cuisine in Italian courts. Sixteenth and seventeenth-century Italy saw the genesis and boom of printed culinary treatises written by cooks, stewards, and carvers who had refined their craft in the courts of Italy and shaped a role for a professionalized, elevated gastronomic culture. The text and images of these books standardized and codified aristocratic culinary culture while at the same time asserting the authors’ elevation from lower-class servants to elite professionals. The illustrations of Scappi and Giegher’s treatises 350 claimed the importance of the visual in passing on gastronomic knowledge, echoing the production of knowledge in contemporary botany, medicine, and natural philosophy. Such exhaustive treatises as Scappi's presented the entirety of professionals' experiences in the kitchen and household and putatively offered instruction to an aspiring reader while establishing the disciplinary norms of elite cookery. However, my archival evidence reveals an elite readership for these treatises. Therefore, I argue that the books should be understood in light of their purpose in elevating culinary culture, offering vicarious glimpses into elite banquets, and conferring cultural status on the reader. The illustrations in Scappi and Giegher’s books codify the specialized tools and spaces of the kitchen and demonstrate complex physical tasks. The authors aggrandized their achievements and knowledge through text and images that often emulated published works of their peers in literature, art, and natural philosophy. The Medici and Farnese courts collected lavish cooking treatise in their libraries and amassed still life paintings of fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, and kitchen utensils in their rural villas. Italian still life painters have been dismissed as imitators of Northern Renaissance styles, but closer examination of their works reveals that artists carefully fashioned their paintings of edible goods to correspond with the “tastes” of their patrons. By the seventeenth century the regions of Florence and Parma shaped their identities in part by the production of foodstuffs—the citrus and wines of Tuscany and the cheese of Parma were known internationally. Studying still life paintings from both regions allows for an analysis of the regional iterations of culinary imagery. Giovanna Garzoni and Felice Boselli both employed the series format to present painted bounties 351 of uncooked foods to their aristocratic patrons. The Medici-supported Garzoni worked within the gender-appropriate medium of the miniature to create delicate specimens of fruits, flowers, insects, and nuts in watercolor washes. Her works conveyed botanical accuracy while at the same time emphasized the edibility of the goods and alluded to gastronomic debates and jokes. Like a carefully constructed credenza course of salads and fruits, her set of hybrid images appealed to Medicean interests in natural philosophy and agricultural wealth. The Farnese and other feudal lords of Parma and Piacenza collected Boselli’s paintings, and his imagery of butchered animals and game alongside fruits, vegetables, and cheeses echoes the enormous variety of foodstuffs enjoyed by his patrons. The works conform thematically to liturgical dietary restrictions and proffer naturalistically rendered goods from the region, including the famed parmigiano reggiano. He often includes kitchen equipment to allude to the transformative tasks of cooks, stewards, and butchers, and the viewer is allowed the privileged role of surveying seemingly infinite varieties of edible goods from all four seasons. I proposed new readings for Garzoni and Boselli’s still lifes based on their treatment of alimentary goods and the display of their works in rural villas, adjacent to the lands whose bounties they depict. However, the hermetic collection of fruits, vegetables, fish, and game on canvas does not merely reflect the natural world outside the villa walls, but also projects a sense of control over nature and agricultural wealth that often contradicted the reality of the courts' circumstances. Aristocratic collectors’ placement of these fantastic bounties in spaces intended for dining or leisure reinforced metaphorical control over 352 the plants and animals of nature through their capture, transformation, and eventual consumption. After the Italian professionalizing treatises of the sixteenth and seventeenth century had ensured an elevated role for cooking, chefs, and gastronomic culture, cookery treatises produced in Italy began to shift focus and offered specifically regional presentations of culinary culture rather than ostensibly totalizing treatments. Additionally, small pamphlets aimed at middle-class audiences and housewives were on the rise, transmitting an entirely different sort of culinary culture (based on economy) to eighteenth-century audiences. The next "encyclopedic" culinary text would be Pellegrino Artusi's Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, published in 1891, which would redefine Italian cooking and become a mainstay for bourgeois households. 1 1 Pellegrino Artusi, La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene (Florence: Salvadore Landi, 1891). For an English translation see Pellegrino Artusi, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, trans. 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Zeri, Francesco and Francesco Porzio, eds. La natura morta in Italia, Vol. 1. Milan: Electa, 1989. 386 Appendix A Selected treatises printed in Italy 1400-1700, organized by genre and date Cuoco literature Martino, Maestro. Libro de arte coquinaria. Mss. 1450-60. Reprints, Milan: Terziaria, 1990 and Udine: Società Filologica Friulana and Arti Grafiche Friulane, 1994. Platina. De honesta voluptate et valetudine. Mss. 1475. Venice, 1475. Reprint, Udine: Società filologica friulana, 1994. Rosselli, Giovanni. Epulario. Venice: Agostino Zanni da Portese, 1516. Colle, Francesco. Refugio de povero gentilhuomo. Ferrara: L. di Russi, 1520. Reprint, Reggio Emilia: AGE, 1994. Messisbugo, Cristoforo. Banchetti compositioni di vivande, et apparecchio general. Ferrara: Giovanni del Buglhat et Antonio Hucher Compagni, 1539. Reprint Bologna: Fornì, 1972. Romoli, Domenico (il Panunto). La singolare dottrina. Venice: Michele Tramezzino, 1560. Scappi, Bartolomeo. Opera. Venice, 1570. Reprint, Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1981. Stefani, Bartolomeo. L’arte di ben cucinare. Mantua, 1662. Reprint Sala Bolognese: Forni, 1983. Gaudentio, Francesco. Il panunto toscano. Rome, 1705. Reprint: Sala Bolognese: A. Forni, 1990. Scalco and Trinciante literature Messisbugo, Cristoforo. Banchetti compositioni di vivande, et apparecchio general. Ferrara: Giovanni del Buglhat et Antonio Hucher Compagni, 1539. Reprint Bologna: Fornì, 1972. Priscianese, Francesco. Trattato del governo della corte di un signore in Roma. Rome, 1543. Buompigli, Piero. Istrutione a un maestro di casa di qualunque principe con il modo di gouernare e aministrare quella, il tutto con ordine di scrittura. Florence, 1569. Cervio, Vincenzo. Il trinciante di Vicenzo Cervio. Venice: Francesco Tramezini, 1581. Reprint: Sala Bolognese: A. Forni, 1980. Rossetti, Giovan Battista. Il Libro dello scalco. Ferrara: Domenico Mammarello, 1584. Reprint Sala Bolognese: A. Forni, 1991. Pandini, Cesare. Il mastro di casa. Rome, 1593. Fusoritto, Reale. Il maestro di casa. Rome: Giulio Burchioni nella stampa del Gabbia, 1593. Evitascandolo, Cesare. Dialogo del mastro di casa. Rome, 1598. Evitascandolo, Cesare. Libro dello scalco. Rome, 1598. Sigismondi, Sigismondo. Pratica cortigiana morale, et economia. Ferrara: Vittorione Baldini, 1604. 387 Lancellotti, Vittorio. Lo scalco prattico di Vittorio Lancellotti da Camerino. Rome: Francesco Corbelletti, 1627. Reprint Bologna: A. Forni, 2003. Frugoli, Antonio. Practica e scalcaria. Rome: Francesco Cavalli, 1631. Reprint Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 2005. Crisci, Giovanni Battista, Lucerna de corteggiani. Naples: J.D. Roncagliolus, 1634. Lunadoro, Girolamo. Relatione della corte di Roma. Padua: Paulo Frambotto, 1635. Adami, Antonio. Il noviziato del maestro di casa. Rome: Pier Antonio Facciotti, 1637. Giegher, Mattias. Li tre trattati. Padua, 1639. Reprint: Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1989. Vasselli, Giovan Francesco. L’Apicio overo il maestro de’conviti. 1647. Reprint Sala Bolognese (Bologna): A. Forni, 1998. Colorsi, Giacomo. Brevita di scalcaria. Rome: Angelo Bernabo, 1658. Liberati, Francesco. Il perfetto maestro di casa di Francesco Liberati Romano. Rome: Angelo Bernabò dal Verme, 1678. Reprint Sala Bolognese: Forni, 1974. Mattei, Venanzio. Teatro nobilissimo di Scalcheria. Rome: Giacomo Dragoncelli, 1669. Latini, Antonio. Lo scalco alla moderna. Naples: Parrino e Mutii, 1692. Herbals with culinary information and books on the properties of foods Mattioli, Pietro Andrea. I discorsi. Venice: Erasmo, 1557. Pisanelli, Baldassare. Trattato della natura de' cibi et del bere. Venice Gio. Battista Uscio, 1587. Reprint Bologna: Forni Editore, 1972. Giachini, Lionardo. Lettera apologetica...in difesa, et lode del popone. Florence: Filippo Giunti, 1600. Angelita, Gio. Francesco. I pomi d’oro. Ricanati: Antonio Braido, 1607. Massonio, Salvatore. Archidipno; overo, Dell'insalata, e dell'uso di essa, trattato nuovo. Venice: Marc'Antonio Brogiollo, 1627. Colmenero, Antonio. Della cioccolata Rome: 1667. Albmair, Teodoro. I quattro elementi. Florence: Insegna della Stella, 1668. Felini, Francesco. Risposta dimostratativa che la cioccolata....Genova, 1676 Aquilani, Massimo. Origine, qvalita e spezie de poponi e altro. Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1602. Medical texts with culinary information Savonarola, Michele. Libreto ... de tute le cose che se manzano comunamente e piu che comune: e di quelle se breveno per Italia: e de sei cose non naturale: & le regule per conservare la sanita de li corpi humani con dubii notabilissimi. Novamente stampato. Venice: Simone de Luere, 1508. Reprint Padua: Editoriale Programma, 1991. Ruscelli, Girolamo. De’ segreti del Reverendo Donno Alessio Piemontese. Venice, 1555. Durante, Castor. Il tesoro della sanità. Rome: Francesco Zannetti, 1586. Reprint, Rome: Peliti, 1965. 388 Petronio, Alessandro. Del viver delli Romani, et di conservar la sanità di M. Alessandro Petronio. Rome: Domenico Basa, 1592. Ricettario Fiorentino (Firenze, 1623). Benzi, Ugo. Regole della sanita et natura de’cibi. Turin: Gio. Domenico Tarino, 1620. Agricultural texts Crescenzi, Pietro. Pietro Crescentio tradotto nouamente per M. Francesco Sansouino. Venice: Francesco Rampazetto, 1564. Gallo, Agostino. Le vinti giornate dell’agricoltura. Venice: Camillo, & Rutilio Borgomineri, 1575. Soderini, Giovanni. Vittorio. Trattato della coltivazione delle viti. Florence: Filippo Giunti, 1600. Tomai, Tomaso. Idea del giardino del mondo. Venice: Sebastian Combi, 1601. Falcone, Giuseppe. La nuova, vaga, et dilettevole villa. Venice: Gio: Battista Bonfadino, 1619. Viticulture Scarlino, Giovanni Battista. Nuovo trattato della varietà, & qualità de Vini, che vengono a Roma. Rome: Valerio Dorico, 1554. Bacci, Andrea, De natvrali vinorvm historia de vinis Italiae. Rome: ex officina Nicholai Mutis, 1596. Lancerio, Sante. I vini d'Italia giudicati da papa Paolo III Farnese e dal suo bottigliere Sante Lancerio, edited by Arturo Celentano. Naples: La conchiglia, 2004. Reprint of the edition edited by Giuseppe Ferraro. Crivellati Cesare. Trattato dell'uso et modo di dare il vino nelle malattie acute, contra il costume de nostri tempi. Rome, 1600. Reprint: Bologna: Arnaldo Forni Croce Giovanni Battista. Della eccellenza e diversità de i vini che nella montagna di Torino si fanno. Turin, 1606. Reprint, Bologna: Arnaldo Forni Simon, André Louis. Bibliotheca vinaria. London, 1913. Reprint: Sala Bolognese: A. Forni, 1985. Etiquette and manners Castiglione, Baldassare. Il libro del cortegiano. Venice: Aldine, 1528. della Casa, Giovanni. Il Galateo di messer Giovanni Della Casa, overo, Trattato de' costumi e modi: che si debbono tenere, ò schifare nella comune conversatione. Florence: Iacopo e Bernardo Giunti, 1561. Literary works related to food culture (selected) Folengo, Teofilo. Merlino Cocai poetæ Mantuani liber macaronices libri XVII. non arte impressi. Venice, 1517. Reprint and English translation by Ann E. Mullaney. Baldo. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. 389 Berni, Francesco. Rime Burlesche (1518-35). Reprint, Milan, 1991. Landi, Giulio. Formaggiata di Sere Stentato al serenissimo re della virtude. Piacenza: Ser Grassino Formaggiaro, 1542. Reprint and commentary by Alberto Capatti, Milan: Grana Padano, 1991. Lando, Ortensio. Commentario delle piu notabili & mostruose cose d'Italia. Venice, 1548. Reprint, Bologna: Pendragon, 1994. Croce, Giulio Cesare, Banchetto de’ mal cibati comedia dell’academico Frusto. Ferrara: Vittorio Baldini, 1601. Miscellaneous works Garzoni, Tomaso. La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo. Venice: Gio. Battista Somalco, 1589. Rabasco, Ottaviano. Il convito overo discorsi di qulle materie che al convito s’appartengono. Florence: Gio. Donato e Bernardo Giunti, 1615. Novarini, Luigi. Cibo dell’Amor di dio. Venice: Gio. Salis., 1636. Zacchia, Paolo. Il vitto quaresimale. Rome: Pietro Antonio Facciotti, 1637. Enrico, P.F. Scalco Spirituale. Naples: Secondino Roneagliolo, 1644. Comparative Works (natural philosophy, herbals, technical manuals) Brunfels, Otto von. Herbarum vivae eicones. Strasbourg, 1530-36. Fuchs, Leonard. De historia stirpium. Basel, 1542. Vesalius, Andreas. De humani corporis fabrica librdi septem. Basel, 1543. Gessner, Conrad. Historia animalium. Zurich, 1551-58. Rondelet, Giullame. Libri de piscibus marinis. Lugduni, 1554. Salviani, Ippolito. Aquatilium animalium historiae. Rome, 1554. Reprint, Rome: Colombo ristampe, 1971. Belon, Pierre. L’Histoire de la nature des oyseaux. Paris, 1555. Giovio, Paulo. Libro di Mons. Paolo Giovio de’ Pesci Romani tradotto in Volgare da Carlo Zancaruolo. Venice: Gualtieri, 1560. Khunrath, Heinrich. Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae. Hamburg: s.n., 1595. Aldrovandi, Ulisse. Ornithologiae hoc est de avibus historiae libri XII. Bologna, 1599. ———. De animalibus insectus libri septum. Bologna, 1602. ———. De mollibus, crustaceis, testaceis, et zoophytis. Bologna, 1606. ———. De piscibus libri V et de cetis lib[rus] unus. Bolona, 1599. Casseri, Giulio. De vocis auditusque organis historia anatomica. Ferrara, 1600- 1601. Ferraro, Pirro Antonio. Cavallo frenato di Pirro Antonio Ferraro Napolitano ... Diuiso in quattro libri. Naples, Appresso Antonio Pace, 1602. Olina, Giovanni Pietro. Uccelliera, overo, Discorso della natura e proprietà di diversi uccelli. Rome, 1622. Reprint, Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2000. Harvey, William. Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus. Frankfurt: Guilielmi Fitzeri, 1628. Stelluti, Francesco. Persio tradotto. Rome, 1630. 390 Redi, Francesco. Esperienze intorno a diverse cose naturali. Florence: All’Insegna della NAVE, 1671. Boccone, Paolo. Icones & descriptiones rariorum plantarum Siciliæ, Melitæ, Galliæ, & Italiæ. Oxford: E Theatro Sheldoniano, 1674. Zanoni, Giacomo. Istoria botanica. Bologna: Gioseffo Longhi, 1675. Biringuccio, Vannuccio. Pirotechnia. Bologna: Gioseffo Longhi, 1678. Moxon, Joseph. Mechanick exercises; or The doctrine of handy-works applied to the art of printing. London, 1683. Boccone, Paolo. Osservazioni naturali... Bologna: Manole, 1684. Redi, Francesco. Osservazioni di Francesco Redi accademico della Crusca intorno agli animali viventi che si trovano negli animali viventi. Florence: Piero Matini, 1684. Boccone, Paolo. Mvseo di fisica e di esperienze: variato, e decorato di osservazioni natvrali, note medicinali, e ragionamenti secondo i principij de' moderni. Venice: Baptistam Zuccato, 1697. Manuscripts Felici, Costanzo. Scritti naturalistici. Vol. 1, Del’insalata e piante che in qualunque modo, Vengono per cibo del’homo. Ed. G. Arbizzoni. Urbino: Quattro Venti, 1986. Manuscripts from 1569-1572. Del Turco, Giovanni. Epulario nel quale s’insegna il modo di cucinare ogni vivanda secondo l’uso della città di Firenze e di mr. Bartolomeo Scappi e di altri cuochi eccellenti. c1602-36. Reprint in Anna Evangelista, ed. Epulario e segreti vari. Trattati di cucina toscana (1602-36). Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1992. Castelvetro, Giacomo. Breve racconto di tutte le radici, di tutte l'erbe e di tutti i frutti che crudi o cotti in Italia si mangiano. 1614. MSS Cambridge, Trinity College. Reprint and English translation by Gillian Riley, The Fruit, Herbs & Vegetables of Italy: An Offering to Lucy, Countess of Bedford. London and New York: Viking, 1989. Nascia, Carlo. Li quattro banchetti. 1680 (Palermo, Biblioteca Comunale di Palermo, MS del Sec. XVII in 4° = 2Qq C 381680; (London, Wellcome Library, MS. 3661); 1681 (Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS PR 3818); 1684 (Soragna, Meli Lupi collezioni); Reprint of Soragna 1684 Mss, Bologna: Arnaldo Forni Editore, 1981. Dalli, Antonio Maria. Piciol lume di cucina. 1701 (Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS PR 233). Reprint, Parma: Antigraphus, 2005. Libro de scalcaria et cuochi nel qui si contiene le regolle che si deve tenir per far convitti et banchetti all'uzanza che si far ogidi. c1635 (London, Wellcome Library, MS 803) della Verde, Maria Vittoria. Notebooks with recipes. Perugia, 1555-1622. Reprint in Gola e preghiera nella clausura dell'ultimo '500, edited by Giovanna Casagrande (Foligno: Arquata, 1989). 391 Felici, Costanzo. Dell’insalata e pieante che in qualunque modo vengono preparate per cibo dall’homo. 1567: Lettera sulle insalate. Lectio nona de fungis, Studi e testi, 6, ed. Enzo Cecchini, with Guido Arbizzoni, et al., Urbino: Accadema Raffaelo, 1977; repr 1996. 392 Appendix B Glossary of terms related to court culinary practices Offices (Ordered by relative level of prestige or payment) maestro di casa majordomo or butler, head supervisor of domestic staff maggiordomo scalco segreto private steward to the duke; oversaw all food preparation and presentation scalco steward credenziere maintained tableware, linens; might also prepare cold foods and garnishes guardarobiere/ person in charge of the guardaroba; cataloged and tracked ducal possessions in the household (furniture, paintings, tableware) maestro di guardaroba trinciante carver; performed and served at banquets cuoco segreto private cook cuoco cook sottocuoco undercook spenditore bursar, purchased goods and kept books dispensiere pantry-keeper, responsible for food storage and distribution canovaio / canovaro cellar master; acquired, mixed and maintained wine stores panattiere stored and distributed bread products fruttiere stored and distributed fruit and fresh produce bottigliere wine steward, selected and maintained wines and water coppiere cup bearer; served and mixed wine publicly at a banquet paggi pages; aristocratic youth learning skills to be a courtier 393 cameriere / garzoni general servants who cleaned and maintained rooms and might also serve at meals; often of aristocratic birth aiutante general term for assistants; might aid the cuoco or scalco, or in the service and presentation of a banquet palafrenieri servants to the duke, helped with the livery, wardrobe, or during the service of a banquet Spaces guardaroba office charged with maintenance of household furnishings, or a closet or room designated to store furnishings and tableware cucina kitchen cucina segreta private kitchen (for duke only) tinello dining area for servants and lower-level staff dispensa pantry credenza sideboard, cupboard; can indicate both the space and office of maintaining tableware and linens, as well as the sideboard display at a banquet (of dishes and cold foods) cantina / bottliglieria wine cellar 394 Appendix C Excerpt from ASF, GM, 1463, registro 3 Excerpt from “YHS M Adi 12 d'obre 1623, Inventario di Tutte le Massertitio e robe che si trovano nel'Palazzo della Ambrogiana che erano in consegnia a franc.o Marmi gia Guard.ba in deetto Palazzo perr darne Credito al predetto e Debito a Filippo Catelani nuovo Guardaroba e prima” [...] nella Chucina Segreto di SAS Dua tavole dalbero che uno lug.o 5 3/4 con dua trespoli sotto e l'altro con pie fermi lung.a -- Uno tavolin di albero con pie ferm Dua Panche dabeto -- Uno Paio di Alari grandi tutti di ferro -- Una tavola d'alvero con pie ferm-- Tre spedoniere di ferro che una minore e tre grande Dua Paia di Spedoniere di ferro a seste da Compag. Tre trepiedi di ferro che tondo e dua Piccoli a triang. Dua spiedi di ferro da arrosti Una Palaccio di ferro da fuocho Dua Graticole di ferro grande Una brestola di ferro forata Quattro Padelle d'Rame da acqua che pesono-- Due (anzi tre) Calderotti di Rame grandi che poesono-- Dua Ramini di rame da scaldare acqua-- Dette navicelle di rame d'arrosti di piu grandezze che pesonon— 36v Diciotto Vasi di Rame di piu grandezze a dua manichi di ferro che pesono-- Quattro vasi di rame forati che pesono -- Tre gliotte di Rame da Arrosti di piu grandezze Una Cazzuola di rame da aqua Una Conserva di Rame da acqu Un Armadio dalbero alto-- Uno Sportello dinanzi Stanza del In.o di Stalla nella Cantina di SAS Chucina Comune fuora del Palazzo 395 Quattro spedoniere di ferro di piu grand.ze Dua trepiedi di ferro che uno tondo Una padella di ferro da friggere Dua grattugie di ferro che una senza manicho Uno Paio di Mani di ferro grandi che uno senza Uno, -- Quattro Padelloni di rame da aqua che pesono--- 37 Quattro tavolini di Panchoni dalbero con pie fermi di 4 luno. [...] 396 Appendix D Excerpt from ASP, CCF, serie VIII, busta 52, fasc. 6 Excerpt from “Inventario de’Mobili in Caprarola, 1681, Inventario De Mobili Nel Palazzo di Caprarola di S A Ser.ma.” [...] Tinello de Servitori Tavole da magiare con suo sedere che la circondano Due capofuochi di ferro di lib. centoquaranta Undici tavolini di castagno Un Tavolino à Telaro di Castagno Un Tavolino di noce, cioe mezza Tavola Un Lantemone di legna foderano di carta Tre Bigomi da piatti consuoi servature Un Bancone da tagliar carne Undici banchi da sedere Un Bacile, et un Boccale di ottone lib. otto e mezzo Piatti tra gradi, e piccoli di stagno n.o trecento e quindi ci pesano lib. ottcento e dui c.8 Piatti da stagna n.o quattordici libre lespanoce sei Stagnati no. quattordici pesano lib. novanta Dodici saliere di stango pesano lib. undici Quattro tazze di stagno pesano una lib. e mezzo Due Tuffe ? da oglio, et aceto di stagno, pesano lib. nove Una tavola di castagna senza piedi Un’altra con dui trspecci simili due altre simili [...] 397 Appendix E Excerpt from ASF, GM, 1429 Excerpt from “Revisioni diverse 1686-1736” A Anime da Cantinetta di piombo fra le robe diverso a___16 B Bacili di Stagno a___11 Bandinello di tela Lina a___nn:ng C Canavacci a___1: Cucchiai, e Forchette d'ottone di ogni sorte a___2:31: Cultelli da trinciare alla tedesca e da tavola a__3:A7: Cabini di rame a___6 Caldaie di rame a___6 Candeglieri d'ottone d'ogni sorte a__12: Caldani di rame a___13 Coperchi di ferro a___14 Calderotti di rame a ___15 Cerchi di ferro con manico sim a___19 Coperchi da Caldaia di Laniera di ferro a__14 Cucchaira d'Ottone con manico stiacciato a___31 Cucchaiara di ferro forate a___14 D E F Forchette, e Cucchiaio d'ott a___12 Ferramenti diversi che non anno conto proprio a___14:33: Forchette di ferro con manico d'osso a__? G Gratelle di ferrro a__21 Grattugie di ferro a__21 I L Lavori diversi di stagno che non anno Conto proprio a___11: Lavamani di ferro a__14: M Mezzine di rame a___7 Mescirobe di stagno a___11 Mestole di ferro a__20 Marchi di ferro a ___14 398 Molle di ferro a___33 N Navicella di rame a___17 O Orcioli di stagno a__11 P Piatti di stagno grandi reali e meyani a__8:25:38 Piatti di stagno da Cappone a scodella e scodelletta di ogni sorte a___9:32 Portafienti di stagno a__10:28 Palette di ferro a___14 Padelloni di ferro a___14 Paioli di rame a___18 Pale di ferro con manico sim a___14:33 Padelle di ferro da friggere a___21 Pulsone di ferro tra i ferrami diversi a___14 Q R Robe diverse che non anno Conti proprio a___10: Ramino di rame a___18: Romaioli di ferro a___20: S Salviette nostrali d'ogni sorte a___4:24 Salviette di francia a___51 Saliere di stagno a___10:28 Sottocoppe di stagno a___11: Squotiboi di rame a___13: Vecchio di rame da foyo a___15: Stadere con gusciodi di rame a___16: Sughere coperte di lana tra le robe diverse a___16: Sacchi di rinfranto a ___ 22:36 Snoccolatoie d'ottone, e di ferro d'ogni sorte a___23: T Tovaglie nostrali d'ogni sorte a___4:24 30:34:37 Tovaglie di francia d'ogni sortet a___5:26:35 Tondini di stagno a__10=28 Trepiedi di ferro a___19: V Vitieci di ferro da Lumi a___14: 399 Appendix F Excerpt from ASF, GM, 466 Excerpts from “Inventario della credenza 1 set 1633-1651” 1 Adi primo di ---*E 1633 Antonio Migliorini, Credenziere di S.A.S deve dare le appie robe, rasegniatoli in mano per servizio della Credenza, d'SAS alla presenza del Sig. Filippo Doni com.u per Inventario. Quattro Bacini d'argent di dua dorati, e lavorati tutti, e dua Bianch lavorati in parte quattro bochali dg.to dua dorati e dua bianchi dieci Candellieri dg.l tutti lavorati Un paio di smocholatori dag.to con suo piiatto e Catenuzza quattro Casse dg.l di dua buglionare.. Quattro salierie dg.to di tre doratet cutte Un salierino dag.to dorati a vasetto dua Scaldavivanda dagt. Co mascher.o e Canpanelli dua qucheriera da dorate quadre Cinque scatoli dag.t da confeti di piu sorte e grandezze Dua panattiere dg. Lavorate a bulino di'una dorata tutto Dua ovieri dag.l a tri angoli di una dorata in parte Dua mestoli dag.l da pasticci di una buchata Undici Cuchiai e'undici forchetti dag.l nove piatti dag.l arci, fondi alla francese dua piatti d'arg.to reali sei piatti dag.to grandi Cinquanta piatti dag.to a Scodella VentiCinque piatti dag.l piani Venti piatti dag.to scodelette TrintaCinque piatti dag.to pian picoli dua Cuchiaini d'ag.to picoli, e CCinque attacagli dg.to da salvietta Dua Cucchiai e dua forchette doro a tre zebbi Un attacaglio da salviette doro Dua di sarabuso legati in oro dua Cultelli di Tavola con maniche di gioie Vent'sei Tapse e Tapzette di porcellana d piu sorte dua Cultelli manicha dag.t a Termine dorate Dua cultelli manicha debano filettati d'ag.to Venti Cultelli manicha davora Dodici Cultelli e dodici forchette di Trinciare 400 1b Segue Antonio Migliorini; quattro panni da tavolino di veluto piano di teeli e luna in ----- quattordici sopra tavolini di Corame rossi di piu sorte Un sopra tavolino d'sommaco rosso Un sopra tavolino di corame tondo dua ventagli da tavola di tale grandi dua seggiole di noce di si ripiegano Coperrte di sommaco rosso Sei candellieri d'ottone da tavola doppi Sette ramini da scaldare lacqua da Credenza otte catini di rami d'piu grandezze una mezzine d'rame Un vaso forati di rame da scuoter la insalata quattro capuole di rame una Caldaia di rame murata dua Carnieri di vachetta rosssa una padella di rame da acqua una zanellina (ranellina) coperta di corme rosso un paio d'arali di tutto ferro dua palette di ferro e dua paia di molle da fuoco da padelle che una da bruciate da grattugie a Casetta Un tavolino di noce da mangiare all'letto Sei tanburi di legnio coperti d'vachetta otto fiamme coperte di vacchetta quattro centoventi salvietti di rensa venti cinque scugamani di rensa (unsa?) settanta una Tovaglia d'rensa d 16/4 Venti dua tovaglie d'lensa d 12/4 otto tovaglie fatte alla rensa nostrale trenta canavacci [...] 21 Francesco Fontani Cuocho segreto della Ser.ma Granduchessa deve dare le appie robbe datoli per servizio della Cucina per d.tta Ser.ma Un piatto darg.to Grande sengniato H Un piatto darg.to alla francese sengniato 12 Dua piatti darg. Pia grandi seng. 10 e 42 Sei salviette di rensa Francesco Vallesi Maestro di Tinello di SAS deve dare le appie stagni per servizio del Tinello datoli dordine del Sig. Bernardo M.... E prima 401 Cento ottanta piatti di stagni a scodella Cento sesanta Tondini di stang.. 25 Adi 25 Giugnio 1637 Lorenzo Bolorini detto Nugoli Tinellante delle donne e di Camera della Granduchessa deve dare le appie robbe datoli con parola dell'Sig. Marchese Giungni dua piatti di stangni grandi reali venti cinque piratti di stangnio a scodella una saliera di stangnio venti cenque tondini di stangnio dua catini di rame un ramino di rame da scaldare lacqua una mezzina di rame quattro Candelliere d'ottone nuovi doppi nove tovaglie ordinarie in fa. quaranta quaranta salviette ordinarie quattordici canvace nuovi quattro i sciugamani 29 Adi 3 di qbb.e 1637 Filippo Melliani e Jacopo Canpani Bottliglieri della Ser.ma Granduchessa devano dare le appie robbe datoli per servizio della bottiglieria di SAS e prima quattro Candellieri darg. Lisci nuovi dieci tovaglie di rensa cinquanta salviette di rensa dodici canavaci nuovi Adi 3 qbb.e 1637 Giulo Peni staffero della Ser.ma P. Anna deve dar le appie robbe datoli per servizio della bottiglieria d. Detta Ser.ma e prima 30 Adi 3 qbb.e 1637 Sig.re Francisco Tondinelle Bilbotecario di SAS deve dar dua Candellieri darg.to tutti lavorati per servizio della libbreria di SAS [...] Excerpt from “Jhs. MMDCLI; Ristretto, e sunto cavato dall'Inventario fatto sino l'Anno 1633 il di primo Settembri, si di Argenteria, come Biancheria, et altra peer servizio della Credenza di SAS in mano alli qui sotto nominati, come si vede; fatto il di 15 Ottobri 1651, e prima” 402 Bacini d'Argento d'ogni sorti Boccali d'Argento di piu sorte Candellieri d'Argento Lavorati, e lisci Snoccolati d'Arg.to con suo Piatti, e Catenazza Tazze d'Argento di piu sorti Saliere d'Arg.to d'ogni sorti Scaldavivande d'Arg.to di piu sorti Zucchiere d'Arg.to di piu sorti Scatole da Confetti diverse d'Argento Panattiere d'Argento diverse Oviere d'Arg.to diverse Mestole, o' Cuchiai d'arg.to da Pasticci Cucchiai, o forcine d'Arg.to di piu' sorte Piatti d'arg.to alla franzese Piatti d'Arg.to Grandi Reali Piatti d'Arg.to Grandi Piatti d'Arg.to a Scodella Piatti d'Arg.to Pian grandi Piatti d'Arg.to Scodellette Piatti d'Arg. Pian piccoli Piatti d'Arg.to Bondini Sputachiere d'Arg.to Piatti d'Arg.to a Navicella Coltilli con Manica d'Arg.to Attaccagli d'Arg.to da Salviette Cuchiai, e Forcine d'oro Tazze di Porcellana di piu sorte Coltilli con manica d'-ano, e Arg.to (fbano?) Coltilli con Maniche d'--ano, Avorio, Osso e tutto ferro Coltilli, e Forcine da Trinciare di piu' sorti Panni da Tavolino di Velluto diversi Sopra Panne da Tavolino di Cuoio d'ogni sorti Candellieri d'Ottone diversi, e scaldavivande Catini di Rame, d'ogni sorte Ramini da Scaldar acqua Mezzine di Rame diverse, et Annaffiatoi Vasi di Rame Forati da Insalata Rami, e ferri diversi Cazzuola di Rame, no.4 in mano al Migliorini Una Caldaia di Rame murata in mano al d. Una Padella di Rame da Acqua in mano al d. Un Paio di Arali di ferro in mano al d.o Dua Palette, e dua paia di Mollette in mano al d. Dua Padelle, che una da frittate, e una forata da bruciate al d. 403 Dua Grattugie con sua casetta Tamburi fiamme, e Case diverse, et altri Robbe Piatti di Stagno di piu sorti Salviette di Rensa, e Nostrale Sciugamani di Rensa Tovaglie di Rensa di piu sorti Canavacci [...] 404 Appendix G ASP, CFPP, busta 250 Excerpt from “Ordinario di quel che dalla Dispensa et Cucina si deve dare il giorno di carne, et la mattina per la Tavola di SA sendo sola In Piacenza et servendosi in dua portate” Una pezza di Manza per Bollire di peso di Libbre quattro Una Lonza di Vitello arrosto di Libbre sedici Un cosciutto di Montone per arrostire di Libbre dieci Un Petto di Montone o’ di vitella di Libbre otto Carne in pezzi di Vitella, o’ di Manza, o di castrato per far qualese sorte di Pottaggi bollitj almeno dua piatti come meglio occorrera di peso di Libre cinque Un cappone grasso Un paio di Pernice, o’ di Beccaccie, o un Lepre, o’ un capretto secondo la stagione qualese meglio si trovera Quattro Pollastri dua rostiti et dua Bollitij Quattro Piccione grassi, o’ casalinghi, o’ comunj, li dua rostiti et dua Bolliti Quattro Tord, o’ quaglie, o’ uccelletti secondo la Stagione Un Pasticcetto caldo di Pollastri, o’ Piccioni, o’ di castrato o’ montone secondo che tornera’ meglio Fegato di Vitello per antipasto, et insieme quallese quazzetto di colli et asi et fegati di Volaghie ese di dano in cu.na Dua sorte d’minestre l’una di Ligumj, et l’altra d’ erbagi, delli quali si deve dare in cucina buona quantita’ per accomodar nelle Vivande secondo occorre In oltre si deve dare in Pasticceria comodita di far in paio di torte per la suddetta Tavola di Frutta, o’ altro secondo ese porta la stagione Devon dare in credenza diverse sorte di Frutta fresca et secca, secondo la Stagione, et tante e se il credentier possa servir quattro o’ sei piatti, et al med.o credentiere si deve dare in capo della settimana un pezzo di Formaggio Parmigiano La servir piu volte in Tavola sin e se resti honorevole et poi atarglieso et servire dell’altro pezzo e se rende alla cucina ?? di piu’ e ese occorre et deve esser detta pezzo di navio[nario?] di quel ese dalla Dispensa et cucina si deve dar il giorno di carne et la sera per la Tavola di S Alt.a: sendo sola in Piacenza et servendosi in una portata Una Lonza di Vitello per arrostire di Libbre sedici ----- 16 Un conscietto di monton arrosto di Libre dodici Petto di vitella in pottaggio, o’ capretto quando, e’ il tempo o’ altro secondo accede et detta carne per tal effetto deve essere di peso di Libbre cinque invirea Una cappon grasso arrosto 405 Un paio di Pernice, o’ un paio di Beccaccie, una Lepre, o’ un capretto secondo il tempo et la stag.one quele ese meglie trovera Quattro Pollastri dua arrosto et dua Bollitij Quattro Piccioni dua rostiti et dua Bollitij Quattro Tordi, o quaglie, o uccelletti secondo la Stagione Qualese sorte di Guazzaretto di colli, et ali et interiori di volaghe che si servano in cucina sendovi la comodita’ Un pasticcetto caldo dalla Pasticceria di Volaghi o’ di carne grossa come torna piu comodo In’ oltre si deve dare in Pasticceria comodita’ di far un paio di Torte per la sec.da Tavola, di Frutta o’ altro secondo ese pronta la Stagione et comodita’ Devesi dare in credenza diverse sorte di Frutta fresca, et secca da servir cotta et cruda et tante ese il Credentier possa servirne quattro o sei piatti secondo la Stagione, et in oltre detta credenza deve servire il pezzo solito di Formagi Deve parimento servire insalate di diverse sorte secondo la Stagione per dua piatti almeno

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Asset Metadata

Creator Hanson, Kate Heckmann (author)

Core Title Visualizing culinary culture at the Medici and Farnese courts

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Art History

Publication Date 08/06/2010

Defense Date 06/04/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag banquet,Boselli, Felice,early modern,Florence,Food,Garzoni, Giovanna,Giegher, Mattia,Italy,OAI-PMH Harvest,Parma,print,Scappi, Bartolomeo,still life painting

Place Name Florence (city or populated place), Italy (countries), Parma (city or populated place)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Howe, Eunice (committee chair), Bleichmar, Daniela (committee member), Rosenthal, Margaret F. (committee member)

Creator Email heckmann@usc.edu,kateheckmann@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3315

Unique identifier UC1417745

Identifier etd-Hanson-3855 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-377444 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3315 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Hanson-3855.pdf

Dmrecord 377444

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Hanson, Kate Heckmann

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu