A Bitesize History of Food in Art

1. Dining al fresco

Not only did the Romans enjoy eating and banqueting, but they also ascribed fruits, nuts, and grains to their gods and goddesses. Grapes were for Bacchus, god of wine, and symbolized revelry and a happy afterlife; wheat was for Ceres, goddess of grain, who embodied virtue and vice.

Roman floor mosaics depicted “unswept” food (food was left on the ground after banquets and this motif was reproduced in the art!) while wall fresco painters painted food, drink, animals, and tableware in devotional and secular scenes. The careful and life-like painting of food was a way for painters to show off their artistic skill. This would remain a constant feature of still life painting throughout Western art history.

2. Gluttons in hell

Food preparation and consumption is a fact of life. It is not surprising then that we find an abundance of such images in medieval manuscripts. These pictures offer glimpses into past food cultures: they can tell us what kind of food was eaten by different social classes, how it was made, and how it was served and eaten (with forks or with fingers, for instance).

Towards the end of the Middle Ages, the aristocratic table became laden with fine foods. Here, a richly-dressed family enjoys a fancy game bird, presented with its own feather on a silver platter.

(You can see more silver on the sideboard).

This gluttony has a moral. Their refusal to feed a beggar (seen on the left side of the manuscript)...

...sends the rich man straight to hell (bottom image) while the poor man ascends to heaven!

4. Fruit face

Arcimboldo’s famous fruit paintings are still a bit of a mystery. Not much is known about the Italian painter, other than that he travelled to the Habsburg court in 1562 and subsequently served as court painter to three Emperors, Ferdinand I, Maximilian II and Rudolf II.

Nor do we know why he began painting his signature portraits of the Emperors with faces composed from fruit. But these paintings are definitely imperial allegories: here, Rudolph II is assimilated as Vertumnus, the Roman god of seasons and growth. The wonderful variety of fruit and vegetables shows that an abundant era had returned!

5. Sexy fruit (before the eggplant emoji 🍆 )

Paintings of fruit were not always about religion, virtue, and abundance. Sometimes they were decidedly erotic! Here, a woman bends down to cut a cabbage (a symbol of female sexuality), suggestively eyeing up the viewer.

The man holds a large carrot in his hand while pointing to an upright cucumber nestled between two tomatoes. No ambiguity here!

7. Rich colors, common foods

Vermeer took a different route than his Dutch contemporaries: he used expensive pigments, rich colors, and exceptional lighting to paint the most common of foods--milk and bread. In a twist of artistic fate, this simple scene has become more iconic than the lavish feasts of his fellow painters.

Zoom closely to see the tiny dots of paint Vermeer painted on the bread-rolls in order to suggest the reflection of light.

9. Eating with Cezanne

The small-scale domestic scenes of still life paintings were considered the least interesting of topics by the 19th-century French Royal Academy, but Cezanne proved that this modest genre could advance ideas in modern painting. Cezanne painted a whole series of still life pictures of fruits during the 1870s.

These paintings represent a highlight of his career and an evolution in his painting style from the light-filled, representational paintings of the Impressionists to the more muted tones, abstracted forms, and distorted perspectives of the Modernists and Cubists. Here, the edges of the fruit bowl are hard to define and the perspective is all wonky: the right side of the corner tilts forward while the glass tilts left!