A Place at the Royal Table

In this work, artist Jean-Baptiste Oudry uses items that evoke meals associated with the royal hunt: a wicker basket full of peaches, a melon of which a quarter has been cut out, a silver dish with carafes and glasses, a bunch of grapes and a pâté en croûte with a slice cut out. There is also a gilded silver cooler with a bottle.

The allegorical bust of America evokes food from the New World which caused a sensation at the Court of Louis XV: figs, depicted here, not forgetting pineapples and coffee. The King’s table thus happily combined tradition and innovation.

This painting shows Domenico Salerno, hunting companion of King Ferdinand IV of Bourbon with hares, pheasants, partridges, mallards and other small birds at his feet. The dogs, which are the main protagonists of the scene, are painted with realism.

It is the work of the Moldavian artist Martin Ferdinand Quadal, renowned portraitist and naturalist. His journey to London, where he painted the English nobility in the style of Sir Joshua Reynolds, is clearly reflected in this work. A tireless traveller, he also stayed in Naples from 1782 to 1786.

This work, in which the faces are remarkably rendered, shows a small group of people in a typical market scene: a fishmonger is weighing a fish for a customer wearing a black shawl while a market gardener with a big hat looks on with a smile.

The artist, Giacomo Francesco Cipper, who specialised in still life and genre scenes, was born in Austria on 15 July 1664, moving to Milan in 1696 where he lived and worked until his death. Cipper is considered to be one of the main upholders of the naturalist tradition, in the Neapolitan style of Caravaggio.

This sumptuous still life shows a rich composition laid out on a table covered with a Persian rug. It including a silver platter, a glass of white wine, some pomegranates, a knife with an onyx handle, a Delft faïence bowl containing peaches and a half-peeled lemon, a melon, a loaf of bread and an oyster.

The Royal Castle of Warsaw

But all these items, rich and evocative, are subjected to the passage of time, indicated by the presence of an open watch.

The metal aiguières, in which the objects and the artist’s silhouette are reflected, are characteristic of Beyeren’s work during that period.

The Łazienki Park was a place where hunts had been organized before it was purchased by the future king in 1764. The area was converted into a park with a residence by the new owner but the population of wild birds and animals had been preserved. Nevertheless, the king, an excellent shooter and hunting enthusiast, travelled to larger Polish forests for hunting. Game meat was often served on the royal table. During just one quarter of the 1765, among others, 16 deer, 89 hares, 223 black grouses, 191 hazel grouses, 898 partridges, 135 wild ducks and 13 quails were eaten.

The painting which depicts hunting trophies, by a painter from Willem van Aelst’s circle, reflects three passions of Stanisław August – hunting and a taste for good cuisine, and also his love for art. The king was the greatest Polish patron and collector of art of the second half of the eighteenth century. Part of his huge collection of paintings is exhibited in the Palace on the Isle.

King Stanisław August became famous for organizing Thursday lunches during which literature, philosophy, culture and socio-political issues of that time were discussed. The king used to invite artists, writers, scholars and politicians. Dishes prepared by the royal chef, Paul Tremo, who had introduced easily digestible French meals to the Polish cuisine, were served during the meetings at the Royal Łazienki Palace. Plums served on a silver platter announced the end of a Thursday dinner.

The plums are presented on Deynuma’s painting from the royal painting collection. Similarly, grapes also refer to the king’s preferences. The royal plantation of grapevine was located within the premises of the Royal Łazienki. The grapes were used to process wine, which was often included in the royal menu by Paul Tremo.

This painting, typical of the still life in fashion in the Netherlands and the Rhineland, depicts the food that was cooked in the 17th century. One can see a dish, a goblet and a bowl filled with peaches, raspberries, blackberries and no doubt strawberries and cherries.

The artist has also depicted a stoneware jug, two glasses filled with wine reflecting the light and a big pewter dish bearing a pie with a slice cut out. Only the piece of pie, the knife and the raspberry placed on the table give an inkling of a sense of life in a scene that is deliberately frozen.

Eighty-one oil paintings on wood, purchased in the Netherlands, were exhibited on the walls of Christian IV’s salon at Rosenberg between 1615 and 1620. The current display attempts to reconstitute the original layout in which they were hung.

The painting shows a lunch on the grass with many noble characters. The scene is in a woodland clearing. A manor house may be seen in the left background. A white cloth has been spread directly on the ground and pewter dishes and plates of different sizes have been placed upon it.

A big dish bears a pheasant pie made from a pâté en croûte decorated with the bird’s head, wings, feathers and tail. In the foreground a woman raises her glass, apparently inviting the viewer to join the scene. Several scenes of seduction are taking place around her.

At the time when the emperor Franz-Joseph and the empress Sissi lived as king and queen of Hungary at Gödöllö, this small dining room was used for meals taken with the family. It was furnished with a neo-Baroque oval table and chairs covered in yellow leather.

The panelled walls were decorated with still life paintings and portraits of the empress Marie-Theresa with her family. Items from the famous set of Herend porcelain, in the Gödöllö heraldic colours, may be seen on the table.

The dressers in the photograph are original pieces from Gödöllö. The porcelain and glass tableware come from the services specially designed for and used by the Royal Family and bear the initials of Franz-Joseph I.

The walls of the serving room adjacent to the small dining room were decorated with landscape paintings and furnished with chairs similar to those in the dining room.

When King Frederick William of Prussia gave his uncle, Prince Henry, a big dinner and dessert service in 1791, he encouraged the introduction of a new style. The simplicity of the borders of the items in this service, decorated with draperies in relief and bouquets of wild flowers, contrasts with the rococo style of the previous decades.

Inspired by the famous Sèvres dinner service, presented to prince Gustav III by Louis XVI in 1784, the factory chose a green and gold border. This service was offered in gratitude to Prince Henry, who had just erected an impressive obelisk in the Rheinsberg gardens, in honour of his late brother, Augustus William, father of the new king.

This oak dining table is fitted with a telescopic opening system with five additional leaves on each side When closed, the table has a diameter of 1.5 metres, but when fully extended it is 4 metres long; it could seat between four and 20 people on chairs in woven reeds.

This table belongs to the dining room furniture ordered by Ferdinand II from Barbosa and Costa in 1866 for La Peña palace. Designed exclusively in Portugal, the table demonstrates the search for functionality and innovation peculiar to the industrial era. It imitates the 17th century style, with animal heads sculpted on the feet, and was clearly destined for use in the country.

This sugar bowl with its matching saucer and spoon, was part of the tea, coffee and hot chocolate service ordered in 1775 by Prince Peter (1717-1786), younger brother of King José I. He used the service at Queluz, his summer residence near Lisbon.

The shape of this piece of porcelain is typical of those produced in China for European clients. In 1807, after the French invasions of Portugal, this set accompanied the Royal family in their exile in Brazil. Today, the Queluz set still includes 123 items.

In the 18th century, the king gave every Prussian princess a service in porcelain made by the Royal manufacture. These sets consisted of a dinner service, a dessert service and a surtout including vases, salad bowls, baskets and figurines.

The dessert plates and other tableware made for Princess Louise, daughter of Queen Louise and King Frederick William III, who married Prince Frederick of the Netherlands in 1825, mainly show views of Potsdam and its environs. The young princess, far from home, could thus show her guests the beauty of the landscapes in which she had grown up.

A particularly elegant model, this oval sugar bowl features two sculpted eagles watching their young as it hatches. Designed in 1806 by Alexandre Brongniart, then director of the Sèvres Manufacture, it is part of the dessert service with garlands of flowers on a gold background delivered to Compiègne in 1809 for Emperor Napoleon I.

Used until 1830, the service then completely disappeared. Today it is represented at Compiègne by several recently-acquired pieces exhibited in the empress’s dining room.

The goblet was made in 1724 to celebrate the marriage of Zofia Sieniawka, daughter of Adam Mikolaj Sieniawski, and Stanislaw Denhoff, governor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then part of the Kingdom of Poland.

The shape of the piece, as well as the engraving of the lower part of the goblet, on the foot, the bud and the fleuron, are typical of the objects designed in the Lubaczów glass factory in the 1720s. The goblet is engraved on one side: two panels topped with crowns contain the coats of arms of Denhoff and his wife. The edge of the goblet is engraved with floral decoration; the foot and the cover are decorated with two branches – one of palm, the other of laurel – joined by a ribbon.

This chalice, with reticello decoration (a network of geometrical shapes) in filigree, probably comes from Venice.

During the Renaissance, the Venetians developed their famous cristallo glass. This new aesthetic style was used in tableware: elegant, gracious shapes, filigree and millefiori, extremely fine glass... Venetian glass-making established itself as the incarnation of luxury: its shapes, its patterns and the technical prowess of its production were imitated all over Europe. Glass-blowers working in the Venetian style opened workshops in Antwerp and Liège in the second half of the 16th century and in Brussels from 1623.

This plate is a relic of majolica tableware, decorated with a coloured rosette and vegetable and geometrical patterns. Majolica is tin-glazed ceramic, also called faïence, in reference to the Italian town of Faenza.

In the 16th century Netherlands, such items, decorated with numerous highly-coloured patterns, were considered to be the height of luxury. The majolica technique is mainly used for tableware, ointment jars and albarelli (small vases) and for making tiles.

The displays at the Palace of Wilanów include a tankard of great value decorated with the portrait of King Jan III and his wife Marie Casimire, as a souvenir of their visit to Gdansk in 1677. The cylindrical tankard is decorated with a characteristic handle and a cover.

The king is depicted clothed as in ancient times, wearing a crown of laurels. The queen has her hair carefully styled and is wearing strings of pearls. Horns of plenty full of fruit form panels surrounding the portraits. The Gdansk master craftsmen started making tableware bearing likenesses of famous people from the 1670s. This fashion helped to make King Jan III more popular.

Small glasses and carafes like these were placed on the tables of the aristocracy. Their simple shape also meant that they could be stored in a luggage compartment during a journey.

They are decorated with heraldic symbols: coats of arms surrounded with badges of office indicating the status of Marshal at the Court of the Republic of Poland. This coloured, polished and gilded glassware, displayed at the Palace of Wilanów, comes from Huta Kryształowa, a big glassworks which produced chandeliers and crystal tableware in the 18th century.

This silver service was made for Queen Maria Theresa, wife of King Charles Albert of Sardinia (1798-1849) and daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

It consists of 363 decorated pieces of various sizes weighing a total of 175 kg; each piece bears the coat of arms of the House of Savoy and the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. This service was part of the collection belonging to the Bruni-Tedeschi family, Piedmontese industrialists, before being bought by the Piedmont regional authority in 1999.