[Mid] Dutch Food: Was Exhibit in Cleveland

Hroar commented in regard to the Dutch still lifes:
>If one is expecting photographic reproduction, this was not
>necessarily it...and the conditions of some of the foods was less than
>desirable (some cheeses that looked like wood, fuzzy lemons, hams with
>fat an inch thick or more, etc), but according to the placards (I am not
>sure how accurate this is) often the food selections and setting were
>religeous allegories.

Well, the _selection_ of the foods might have been allegorical in some instances,
but their depiction was pretty realistic. A local friend who is a plant pathologist
kept telling me the various plant diseases that were represented in certain paintings.
The inch-thick fat (slu-u-rp!) you referred to might have been on the painting where
the accompanying book details the authenticity. The exhibit book includes a drawing
from a period carving book that shows the same knife cuts and slices, even to pulling
the skin back away from the meat to make the slices.

Contrary to Hroar's experience, I found most of the paintings to be extremely
realistic. In one large depiction of meat in a tavern's larder (IIRC the description)
there are three or four small pies in the front. It is so clear and obvious that
the shells were hand-formed, and that the shell was what the contents were baked in,
not using a metal pie mold such as we use. The thickness of the standing pie doughs
is very clear.

Saradwen got the manuscript book; I splurged and got the still life book as well as
another one on still lifes that had a few different pictures, plus some close-ups of
the ones in the current display. I plan to use a number of the pictures to illustrate
a talk on period confections this January.

Alys Katharine, getting hungry
From: alysk@ix.netcom.com
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Received on Thu Dec 30 08:31:26 1999