Stories in Food

On a trip to Bologna in Northern Italy, like many visitors, I was bowled over by the wonderful food, from the delicious fresh pasta served dozens of ways to the tasty cold meats and cheeses. Photographing the appetising displays in shop windows was irresistible!

They also set me thinking about the tradition of genre paintings that showed everyday scenes involving the sale and preparation of food; many of them included biblical scenes in the background. For example the 16th century Flemish artist, Joachim Beuckelaer's, painting of a kitchen scene with Christ at the Supper at Emmaus in the background.

 

 

A more famous work by the late Renaissance painter, Annibale Carracci, is The Butcher's Shop. Here, the painter abandons religious themes for a comment on the society of his day. Some of the Carracci family were involved in the butchery trade which was extremely important in Bologna where the family originated and the painter shows the butchers as dignified men absorbed in their work. The pose of the man in the foreground, who is in the act of slaughtering a sheep, is even taken from a painting by Raphael of the biblical subject of Noah. Some art historians have interpreted the representation of the guard on the left of the picture, with his exaggerated codpiece and fancy clothes, as a satire on the city authorities, comparing them unfavourably with the hard-working merchant guilds. The man looks on greedily as the butcher weighs out his meat. The old woman in the background may symbolise avarice and suspicion. She obviously doesn't trust the butcher who in in the act of preparing her chop!

 

 

 

Whatever the messages the painting contains, it's a fascinating example of a turn away from the tight, precise and highly polished style of Mannerism to a looser, more free use of paint that heralds the Baroque era. The painting came to England in 1630 when it was purchased by Charles I. It's now in Christ Church College Oxford's picture gallery and was donated to the college in the late 18th century. It hung in the kitchens gathering dirt and grease until its importance was recognised in the 1950s.